Exonym and endonym
Encyclopedia
In ethnolinguistics
, an endonym or autonym
(from the Greek , éndon, "within" or , auto-, "self" and ὄνομα, ónoma, "name") is a local name for a geographical feature, and an exonym or xenonym
(from the , éxō, "out" or , xénos, "foreign" and , ónoma, "name") is a foreign language name for it. Exonyms and endonyms can be names of places (toponym), ethnic groups (ethnonym), languages (glossonym), or individuals (personal name
). The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
defines:
For example, China
, India
, Germany
, Greece
, Japan
, and Korea
are the English
exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Zhongguo
, Bharat
, Deutschland, Hellas
, Nippon/Nihon
, and Goryeo
, respectively.
words which have diverged in pronunciation
or orthography
, or they may be fully or partially translated from the native language. For example, London
is known by the cognate exonyms Londres in Catalan
, French
, Portuguese
, Spanish
, and Tagalog
, Londino (Λονδίνο) in Greek
, Londen in Dutch
, Londra in Italian
, Maltese
,
Romanian
and Turkish
, Londer in Albanian, Londýn in Czech
and Slovak
, Londyn in Polish
, Lundúnir in Icelandic
, Lontoo in Finnish
, Lun Dun in Mandarin and Luân Đôn in Vietnamese
. An example of a translated exonym is the name Soviet Union
.
Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed (i.e. from a third language). For example, Slovene uses the native exonyms Dunaj (Vienna
) and Benetke (Venice
), and the borrowed exonyms Kijev (Kiev
) and Vilna (Vilnius
), from Russian and Polish, respectively. A substantial proportion of English exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French, for example: Navarre
(Navarra/Nafarroa), Belgrade
(Beograd), Cologne
(Köln), Munich
(München), Prague
(Praha), Turin
(Torino), Copenhagen
(København) etc.
name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people; both the Jingpo and Burmese use the Chinese word yeren 野人 (lit. "wild men") "savage; rustic people" as the name for Lisu people.
Exonyms develop for places of special significance for speakers of the language of the exonym. Consequently, most European capitals have English exonyms, e.g. Athens
(Αθήνα/Athína), Belgrade
(Београд/Beograd), Bucharest
(Bucureşti), Brussels
(Bruxelles, Brussel), Copenhagen
(København), Lisbon
(Lisboa), Moscow
(Москва/Moskva), Nicosia
(Λευκωσία/Lefkosía), Prague
(Praha), Rome
(Roma), Vienna
(Wien) or Warsaw
(Warszawa), while for instance historically less prominent capitals Ljubljana
and Zagreb
do not (but do in, for example, German
: Laibach and Agram). Madrid
, Paris
, Berlin
and Amsterdam
, with identical names in most major European languages, are exceptions. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades
. Livorno
, to take an instance, was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy; not far away, Rapallo
, a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym.
In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus, the Russians used the village name of Chechen
, medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus, a word for Hell, to produce Tartar
), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians.
The Germanic
invaders of the Roman Empire
applied the word "Walha
" to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for all non-Germanic speakers; thence, the names Wallachia
, Vlachs
, Wallonia, Walloons
, Wales
, Wallasey
, and even the Polish name for Italy, Włochy
.
term for the Germans, Nemtsi, possibly deriving from a plural of nemy ("mute"): standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because their language was unintelligible. The term survives to this day in the Russian
nemtsy (немцы), Bulgarian
nemtsi (немци), Polish
Niemcy, Czech
Němci, Slovak
, Slovenian
and Serbian
Nemci, Croatian
and Bosnian
Nijemci, as well as in the Hungarian
Német and Romanian
Nemţi (both adopted from the Slavic), and even in the Turkish
Nemçe and Arabic
al-Nimsa (النمسا). (The Turkish was adapted from the Slavic, and the Arabic from the Turkish, the words in both cases referring specifically to Austria
).
One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term "Slav" suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence "Slovenia
," "Slovakia
"), meaning "word" or "speech." In this context, the Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones".
Another example of such development is the exonym "Sioux
," an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux, derived most likely from a Proto-Algonquian term, *-a·towe·, "foreign-speaking."
White settlers in South Africa
thought that the Khoi-San natives gabbled nonsense syllables, and so called them "Hottentots
."
Two millennia earlier, the Greeks had thought that all non-Greek-speakers spoke gibberish ("bar-bar-bar"), and so called them "barbarian
s," which eventually gave rise to the exonym "Berber
."
While the Irish
words for England
and its people are Sasana and Sasanach ("Saxons"), the word for the English language
is Béarla, which derives ultimately from a word meaning "lips." In Old Irish, this word was applied to any foreign language, but by the medieval period it had come to be used exclusively for the English language.
way; for example, Romani people prefer that term over exonyms like Gypsy (from Egypt
), or the French term bohémien, bohème (from Bohemia
). People may also seek to avoid exonyms due to historical sensitivities, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places which used to be ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk and Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary), much like Russian place names being used for locations once under its control (e.g. Kiev/Kyiv).
In recent years, geographers
have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish
capital as Ankara
rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora
. However, according to the United Nations
Statistics Division, "Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in the intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language’s cultural heritage."
Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling and word category. The endonym may include sounds which are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over the years, phonetic changes may happen to the endonym either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris, where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne
, where the Latin
original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia closely reflects the Latin original. In many cases no standardized spelling is available either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalyzed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be simply a plural noun and does not extend itself to adjectival usage in another language, like English, which has a propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. The attempt to use the endonym thus has a bizarre-sounding result.
The name for a language and a people are often different terms, of course, which is a complication for an outsider.
Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country:
Many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most province names in mainland China, following Hanyu Pinyin spelling, as the current standard romanisation in China, e.g. Beijing
(北京 Běijīng), Guangdong
(广东 Guǎngdōng) (province), Qingdao
(青岛 Qīngdǎo), although older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts – e.g. Peking (duck, opera, etc.), Canton, etc. However, the official romanized name of New Taipei (新北 Xīnběi) which has been the largest city of the Republic of China
since late 2010 is based on an English exonym Taipei and a totally English word New.
as in the case of Saint Petersburg
, which became Petrograd (Петроград) in 1914, Leningrad (Ленинград) in 1924, and Saint Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург Sankt-Peterbúrg) again in 1991. In this case, although St Petersburg has a German etymology, this was never a German exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam
, the Dutch name of New York City
until 1664, is not its Dutch exonym.
Old place names, which have become outdated after renaming, may afterwards still be used as historicisms. For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad
, not the Siege of St. Petersburg, because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant
was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad
(Калининград), as it has been called since 1946.
Sometimes, however, historical names are deliberately not used because of nationalist tendencies to linguistically lay claim to a city's past. As a case in point, the Slovak Wikipedia article on the 1805 Peace of Pressburg
does not use either of the city's names then in use (the Slovak Prešporok or the official, that is German, Pressburg), but today's name Bratislava, which became the city's name only in 1919.
The name Madras, now Chennai
, may be a special case. When the city was first settled by Englishmen, in the early 17th century, both names were in use. Possibly they referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym.
Likewise, Istanbul
is still called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολη) in Greek, despite the name having been changed in Turkish (and other languages) between 1923 and 1930. (Ironically, the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase.)
, transcribe foreign proper names whenever necessary, including those originally written in Latin script. The reasons are the respective nations' preference for their own consistent phonetic spelling and the need to add native inflectional endings
to most nouns. The resulting advantage is that reading and spelling in these languages remain easy (knowledge of how to spell any unadapted foreign words is not required); a disadvantage is that foreigners may erroneously complain that their names have been "misspelled".
The phonetic transcription is often more correct: e.g., Varšava, Varšuva, Varšava, Varşova, Varşava (in Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani, respectively), with v and ʃ, is phonetically closer to the original Polish Warszawa [varˈʂava] than the English Warsaw [ˈwɔrsɔː]. (The sound ʂ is usually perceived as closer to [ʃ] than [s] by speakers of languages with those two sounds but not [ʂ].) However, such spellings may also reveal widespread ignorance of the way a place name is actually pronounced: e.g., Çikaqo, Ĉikago, Čikāga, Čikaga, Čikago (in Azerbaijani, Esperanto, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Serbian, respectively), which misinterpret English orthographic ch as phonetic [tʃ].
Ethnolinguistics
Ethnolinguistics is a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community i.e...
, an endonym or autonym
Autonym
Autonym may refer to*Autonym, the name used by a people to refer to themselves or their language, synonymous with endonym*Autonym, the true name of an author disclosed by resolving a pseudonym...
(from the Greek , éndon, "within" or , auto-, "self" and ὄνομα, ónoma, "name") is a local name for a geographical feature, and an exonym or xenonym
Xenonym
Xenonym is a term derived from the Greek , literally "foreign name", from , "foreign" and , "name". The meaning of this term depends on whether it applies to names or to relations between words:...
(from the , éxō, "out" or , xénos, "foreign" and , ónoma, "name") is a foreign language name for it. Exonyms and endonyms can be names of places (toponym), ethnic groups (ethnonym), languages (glossonym), or individuals (personal name
Personal name
A personal name is the proper name identifying an individual person, and today usually comprises a given name bestowed at birth or at a young age plus a surname. It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; except in rare cases, for example feral children growing up in isolation, or infants...
). The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names was set up by the Secretary General of the United Nations on April 23, 1959....
defines:
- Endonym: Name of a geographical feature in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the feature is located.
- Exonym: Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well-established language of that area where the geographical feature is located.
For example, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
are the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Zhongguo
Names of China
In China, common names for China include Zhonghua and Zhongguo , while Han and Tang are common names given for the Chinese ethnicity. Other names include Huaxia, Shenzhou and Jiuzhou...
, Bharat
Names of India
The name India may refer to either the region of Greater India , or to the contemporary Republic of India contained therein....
, Deutschland, Hellas
Name of Greece
The name of Greece differs in Greece in comparison with the names used for the country in other languages and cultures, just like the names of the Greeks...
, Nippon/Nihon
Names of Japan
There are many names of Japan in the English, Japanese, and other languages. The word "Japan" is an exonym, and is used by a large number of languages. The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon and Nihon . They are both written in Japanese using the kanji 日本...
, and Goryeo
Names of Korea
There are various names of Korea in use today, derived from ancient kingdoms and dynasties. The modern English name Korea is an exonym derived from the Goryeo period and is used by both North Korea and South Korea in international contexts...
, respectively.
Types of exonyms
Exonyms may derive from different roots (as in the case of Germany for Deutschland), they may be cognateCognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
words which have diverged in pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
or orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
, or they may be fully or partially translated from the native language. For example, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
is known by the cognate exonyms Londres in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Tagalog
Filipino language
This move has drawn much criticism from other regional groups.In 1987, a new constitution introduced many provisions for the language.Article XIV, Section 6, omits any mention of Tagalog as the basis for Filipino, and states that:...
, Londino (Λονδίνο) in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Londen in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Londra in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Maltese
Maltese language
Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
,
Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Londer in Albanian, Londýn in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
and Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Londyn in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Lundúnir in Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Lontoo in Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Lun Dun in Mandarin and Luân Đôn in Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
. An example of a translated exonym is the name Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed (i.e. from a third language). For example, Slovene uses the native exonyms Dunaj (Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
) and Benetke (Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
), and the borrowed exonyms Kijev (Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
) and Vilna (Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
), from Russian and Polish, respectively. A substantial proportion of English exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French, for example: Navarre
Navarre
Navarre , officially the Chartered Community of Navarre is an autonomous community in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Country, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Aquitaine in France...
(Navarra/Nafarroa), Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
(Beograd), Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
(Köln), Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
(München), Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
(Praha), Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
(Torino), Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
(København) etc.
Tendencies in the development of exonyms
James A. Matisoff, who introduced the term "autonym" into linguistics, said, "Human nature being what it is, exonyms are liable to be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup." For examples, Matisoff notes Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the PalaungPalaung language
Palaung is a Mon–Khmer language, or actually a dialect cluster, spoken by over half a million people in Burma and neighboring countries. There are three distinct varieties, Shwe , Ruching , and Rumai, each with their own dialects...
name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people; both the Jingpo and Burmese use the Chinese word yeren 野人 (lit. "wild men") "savage; rustic people" as the name for Lisu people.
Exonyms develop for places of special significance for speakers of the language of the exonym. Consequently, most European capitals have English exonyms, e.g. Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
(Αθήνα/Athína), Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
(Београд/Beograd), Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
(Bucureşti), Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
(Bruxelles, Brussel), Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
(København), Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
(Lisboa), Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
(Москва/Moskva), Nicosia
Nicosia
Nicosia from , known locally as Lefkosia , is the capital and largest city in Cyprus, as well as its main business center. Nicosia is the only divided capital in the world, with the southern and the northern portions divided by a Green Line...
(Λευκωσία/Lefkosía), Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
(Praha), Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
(Roma), Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(Wien) or Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
(Warszawa), while for instance historically less prominent capitals Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
and Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
do not (but do in, for example, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Laibach and Agram). Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, with identical names in most major European languages, are exceptions. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
. Livorno
Livorno
Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...
, to take an instance, was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy; not far away, Rapallo
Rapallo
Rapallo is a municipality in the province of Genoa, in Liguria, northern Italy. As of 2007 it counts approximately 34,000 inhabitants, it is part of the Tigullio Gulf and is located in between Portofino and Chiavari....
, a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym.
In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus, the Russians used the village name of Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
, medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus, a word for Hell, to produce Tartar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians.
The Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
invaders of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
applied the word "Walha
Walha
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
" to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for all non-Germanic speakers; thence, the names Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
, Vlachs
Vlachs
Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...
, Wallonia, Walloons
Walloons
Walloons are a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia. Walloons are a distinctive community within Belgium, important historical and anthropological criteria bind Walloons to the French people. More generally, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the Walloon...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, Wallasey
Wallasey
Wallasey is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England, on the mouth of the River Mersey, at the northeastern corner of the Wirral Peninsula...
, and even the Polish name for Italy, Włochy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
Mutes and gabblers
Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'." Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking" or "nonsense-speaking". The classic example is the SlavicSlavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
term for the Germans, Nemtsi, possibly deriving from a plural of nemy ("mute"): standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because their language was unintelligible. The term survives to this day in the Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
nemtsy (немцы), Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
nemtsi (немци), Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
Niemcy, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
Němci, Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Slovenian
Slovenian language
Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...
and Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
Nemci, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
and Bosnian
Bosnian language
Bosnian is a South Slavic language, spoken by Bosniaks. As a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect, it is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina....
Nijemci, as well as in the Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
Német and Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
Nemţi (both adopted from the Slavic), and even in the Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
Nemçe and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
al-Nimsa (النمسا). (The Turkish was adapted from the Slavic, and the Arabic from the Turkish, the words in both cases referring specifically to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
).
One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term "Slav" suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence "Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
," "Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
"), meaning "word" or "speech." In this context, the Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones".
Another example of such development is the exonym "Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
," an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux, derived most likely from a Proto-Algonquian term, *-a·towe·, "foreign-speaking."
White settlers in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
thought that the Khoi-San natives gabbled nonsense syllables, and so called them "Hottentots
Khoikhoi
The Khoikhoi or Khoi, in standardised Khoekhoe/Nama orthography spelled Khoekhoe, are a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group, the native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen . They had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD...
."
Two millennia earlier, the Greeks had thought that all non-Greek-speakers spoke gibberish ("bar-bar-bar"), and so called them "barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
s," which eventually gave rise to the exonym "Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
."
While the Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
words for England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and its people are Sasana and Sasanach ("Saxons"), the word for the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
is Béarla, which derives ultimately from a word meaning "lips." In Old Irish, this word was applied to any foreign language, but by the medieval period it had come to be used exclusively for the English language.
Controversies and complications
In the late 20th century the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in a pejorativePejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
way; for example, Romani people prefer that term over exonyms like Gypsy (from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
), or the French term bohémien, bohème (from Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
). People may also seek to avoid exonyms due to historical sensitivities, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places which used to be ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk and Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary), much like Russian place names being used for locations once under its control (e.g. Kiev/Kyiv).
In recent years, geographers
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
capital as Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora
Angora
Angora is the historic name of Ankara, Turkey Angora may also refer to:* Angora, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania** Angora , a commuter rail station* Angora Township, Minnesota* Angora, Nebraska* Angora , a musical group...
. However, according to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Statistics Division, "Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in the intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language’s cultural heritage."
Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling and word category. The endonym may include sounds which are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over the years, phonetic changes may happen to the endonym either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris, where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, where the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia closely reflects the Latin original. In many cases no standardized spelling is available either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalyzed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be simply a plural noun and does not extend itself to adjectival usage in another language, like English, which has a propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. The attempt to use the endonym thus has a bizarre-sounding result.
The name for a language and a people are often different terms, of course, which is a complication for an outsider.
Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country:
- In 1985 the government of Côte d'IvoireCôte d'IvoireThe Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
requested that the country's French name be used in all languages instead of exonyms such as Ivory Coast, so that Côte d'Ivoire is now the official English name of that country in the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
and the International Olympic CommitteeInternational Olympic CommitteeThe International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
(see Name of Côte d'Ivoire). - The UkrainianUkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
government maintains that the capital of Ukraine should be spelled Kyiv in English because the traditional English exonym KievKievKiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
was derived from the Russian name Kiyev (Киев) (see Kiev: City name evolution). - The BelarusBelarusBelarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
ian government argues that the endonym Belarus should be used in all languages and has been rather successful in English, where the former exonym Byelorussia, still used with reference to the Soviet RepublicByelorussian SSRThe Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union. It was one of the four original founding members of the Soviet Union in 1922, together with the Ukrainian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...
, has virtually died out, whereas in other languages exonyms like German Weißrussland, Dutch Wit-Rusland, Icelandic Hvíta-Rússland, Faroese Hvítarussland, Danish Hviderusland, Swedish Vitryssland, Greek Lefkorosía (Λευκορωσία), Turkish Beyaz Rusya, Estonian Valgevene, Finnish Valko-Venäjä (all literally 'White Russia'), or French Biélorussie are still much more common than Belarus (see History of the name Belarus). - In 1972 the government of Ceylon (the word is the anglicized form of Portuguese Ceilão) changed the name to Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, although the name Ceylon was retained as the brand name for tea. - In 1989 the government of Burma requested that the English name of the country be MyanmarMyanmarBurma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
, with Myanma as the adjective of the country and Bamar as the name of the inhabitants (see Names of Burma). - In 2006 the South Korean national government officially changed the Chinese name of its capital, SeoulSeoulSeoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
, from the exonym Hancheng (汉城) to Shou'er (首尔). This use has now been made official within the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of ChinaChina , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. - In 1935 Reza ShahReza ShahRezā Shāh, also known as Rezā Shāh Pahlavi and Rezā Shāh Kabir , , was the Shah of the Imperial State of Iran from December 15, 1925, until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran on September 16, 1941.In 1925, Reza Shah overthrew Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar...
requested that foreign nations use the name IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
rather than Persia in official correspondence. The name of the country had internally been Iran since the time of the Sassanid EmpireSassanid EmpireThe Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...
(224–651), whereas the name Persia is descended from Greek Persis (Περσίς), referring to a single province.
Many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most province names in mainland China, following Hanyu Pinyin spelling, as the current standard romanisation in China, e.g. Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
(北京 Běijīng), Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
(广东 Guǎngdōng) (province), Qingdao
Qingdao
' also known in the West by its postal map spelling Tsingtao, is a major city with a population of over 8.715 million in eastern Shandong province, Eastern China. Its built up area, made of 7 urban districts plus Jimo city, is home to about 4,346,000 inhabitants in 2010.It borders Yantai to the...
(青岛 Qīngdǎo), although older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts – e.g. Peking (duck, opera, etc.), Canton, etc. However, the official romanized name of New Taipei (新北 Xīnběi) which has been the largest city of the Republic of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
since late 2010 is based on an English exonym Taipei and a totally English word New.
Confusion with renaming
Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with the results of geographical renamingGeographical renaming
Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area. This can range from the uncontroversial change of a street name to a highly disputed change to the name of a country. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries,...
as in the case of Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, which became Petrograd (Петроград) in 1914, Leningrad (Ленинград) in 1924, and Saint Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург Sankt-Peterbúrg) again in 1991. In this case, although St Petersburg has a German etymology, this was never a German exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
, the Dutch name of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
until 1664, is not its Dutch exonym.
Old place names, which have become outdated after renaming, may afterwards still be used as historicisms. For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
, not the Siege of St. Petersburg, because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad is a seaport and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea...
(Калининград), as it has been called since 1946.
Sometimes, however, historical names are deliberately not used because of nationalist tendencies to linguistically lay claim to a city's past. As a case in point, the Slovak Wikipedia article on the 1805 Peace of Pressburg
Peace of Pressburg
The Peace of Pressburg refers to four peace treaties concluded in Pressburg . The fourth Peace of Pressburg of 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars is the best-known.-First:...
does not use either of the city's names then in use (the Slovak Prešporok or the official, that is German, Pressburg), but today's name Bratislava, which became the city's name only in 1919.
The name Madras, now Chennai
Chennai
Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
, may be a special case. When the city was first settled by Englishmen, in the early 17th century, both names were in use. Possibly they referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym.
Likewise, Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
is still called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολη) in Greek, despite the name having been changed in Turkish (and other languages) between 1923 and 1930. (Ironically, the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase.)
Orthographic exonymy in languages with phonetic spelling
There are a few languages in Europe in which the use of seeming exonyms (in terms of spelling but not necessarily pronunciation) for places and people is actually the norm and not an exception: Latvian, Lithuanian, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Serbian (when written in Roman script), all having Latin-based scriptAlphabets derived from the Latin
A Latin alphabet is an alphabetical writing system that uses letters of the original Roman Latin alphabet and often various extensions, the Latin script...
, transcribe foreign proper names whenever necessary, including those originally written in Latin script. The reasons are the respective nations' preference for their own consistent phonetic spelling and the need to add native inflectional endings
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
to most nouns. The resulting advantage is that reading and spelling in these languages remain easy (knowledge of how to spell any unadapted foreign words is not required); a disadvantage is that foreigners may erroneously complain that their names have been "misspelled".
The phonetic transcription is often more correct: e.g., Varšava, Varšuva, Varšava, Varşova, Varşava (in Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani, respectively), with v and ʃ, is phonetically closer to the original Polish Warszawa [varˈʂava] than the English Warsaw [ˈwɔrsɔː]. (The sound ʂ is usually perceived as closer to [ʃ] than [s] by speakers of languages with those two sounds but not [ʂ].) However, such spellings may also reveal widespread ignorance of the way a place name is actually pronounced: e.g., Çikaqo, Ĉikago, Čikāga, Čikaga, Čikago (in Azerbaijani, Esperanto, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Serbian, respectively), which misinterpret English orthographic ch as phonetic [tʃ].
See also
- -onym-onymThe suffix onym, in English and other languages, means "word, name," and words ending in onym refer to a specified kind of name or word, most of which are classical compounds. For example, an acronym is a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts...
- ShibbolethShibbolethA shibboleth is a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important...
- List of indigenous language names
- List of adjectival forms of place names
- Romanian exonymsRomanian exonymsBelow is list of 'borrowed words' into Romanian language, or exonym-words for places outside Romania and Republic of Moldova. Most of them shall keep the original writing, unless not using latin alphabet :-Albania:*Voskopojë Moscopolea*Korçë Curceauă...
- German exonymsGerman exonymsBelow is list of German language exonyms for formerly German places and places in non-German-speaking areas of the world :-Links to more extensive lists:Belgium* List of German exonyms for places in BelgiumCroatia...
- Icelandic exonymsIcelandic exonymsThe following is a list of Icelandic exonyms, that is to say names for places that do not speak Icelandic that have been adapted to Icelandic spelling rules, or are simply native names from Viking times ....
- Latin exonymsLatin exonyms-Bulgaria:*Balchik - Dionysopolis*Kyustendil - Pautalia*Lom - Almus*Lovech - Melta*Pleven - Storgozia*Plovdiv - Philippopolis*Razgrad - Abrittus*Ruse - Sexaginta Prista*Silistra - Durostorum*Sofia - Serdica*Sozopol - Apollonia Pontica...
- Russian exonymsRussian exonymsBelow is a list of Russian language exonyms for places, mainly in Europe. Note that this list only includes names that are significantly different from the local toponym, some exonyms are marked as historical, modern exonyms may match the toponyms....
- German names for Central European townsGerman names for Central European townsThis article deals with the historic German language names of towns and cities in Central Europe.Many place names in Central Europe, mostly in the former German Empire and Austria-Hungary, but now located in non-German-speaking countries, have traditionally had equivalents in the German language...
- List of English exonyms for German toponyms
- List of English exonyms for Italian toponyms
- List of Welsh exonyms for English toponyms
- Names of European cities in different languagesNames of European cities in different languagesMany cities in Europe have different names in different languages. Some cities have also undergone name changes for political or other reasons. This article attempts to give all known different names for all major cities that are geographically or historically and culturally in Europe...
- List of European exonyms
- Slavic toponyms for Greek places
- List of countries and capitals in native languages
- List of alternative country names
- List of country names in various languages
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- List of European regions with alternative names
- List of European rivers with alternative names
- List of traditional Greek place names
- English exonyms of Arabic speaking placesEnglish exonyms of Arabic speaking placesThe list includes countries and territories, and their capitals or administrative centres, where at least one official language is Arabic. Standard Arabic pronunciation was chosen.-Countries/territories and capitals/administrative centres:-Egypt:...
- Place names in IrishPlace names in IrishThe vast majority of placenames in Ireland are anglicisations of Irish language names; that is, adaptations of the Irish names to English phonology and spelling. However, some names come directly from the English language, and a handful come from Old Norse and Ulster Scots...
- List of cities in the Americas with alternative names
External links
- 2006 UN document discussing exonyms (PDF)
- Jacek Wesołowski's Place Names in Europe, featuring endonyms and exonyms for many cities
- "Does Juliet's Rose, by Any Other Name, Smell as Sweet?" by Verónica Albin.
- Looking up in exonym database
- European geographical names infrastructure and services (EuroGeoNames)
- UN document describing EuroGeoNames (PDF)