You’re making me Hungary.
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Well actually, it’d be United States of America. The US doesn’t speak for the continent, as much as they’d like to think.
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I prefer the other etymology (the second, co-equal one listed in the Wikipedia article), which has it that the path of importation was indirect (the article says “via the Middle East”, which Turkey ain’t, but whatever). The Wikipedia article gives a pretty dry account; the one I read previous is considerably more embellished, and funnier.
I have been scolded by an (ethnically Greek) Cypriot for referring to the capital of Turkey as Istanbul and not Constantinople. They are not over it yet.
But yet those same socialites dress up like (a medieval person’s idea of) Arabs to graduate from their fancy prep schools and universities. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Trick question! It’s the United States! (of America)
Which, just as another piece of trivia, was suppressed by Ataturk as part of his efforts to secularize Turkey. (The logic being, can’t pray with your head uncovered, can’t pray if you can’t touch your forehead to the ground, can’t touch your forehead to the ground if you’re wearing a brimmed hat, and Mustafa Kamal says you can’t wear a brimless hat, so… gotcha!)
Given his anti-secular leanings, one might imagine Erdoğan would be all in for the fez.
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These conflicts are still within living memory. (No doubt helped by more recent aides-memoires)
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Oh quite; I’ve been back and forth across the Green Line between the two halves of Cyprus a number of times. But I think it’s a little bit of a reach to connect Cyprus’ 1974 rift closely to this particular beef; after all, the fall of Byzantium was in 1453.
I mean, people gonna do what they gonna do, and if the Greek name for Istanbul is Κωνσταντινούπολη that’s their business, just as much (and as little) as it’s Anglophones’ business whether Turkey is Turkey or Türkiye, or whether Limassol is Limassol or Λεμεσός for that matter.
… although, per Wikipedia, it was only in 1930 that “Turkey officially requested that other countries use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin script that had been used in the Ottoman times” so yeah, within living memory, though only just.
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Both will catch up eventually!
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And to anyone who finds that bit of trivia interesting, I highly recommend this book
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Sounds great.
I assume you never read it without the fez on?
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All part of reforming (and later dismantling) an empire with a plethora of minority cultures, and rebuilding a modern nation-state with only one.
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The have the right the same way China did when they switched their system of how place names are pronounced.
The only reservation is Erdogan’s possible motives. Is he doing it for nationalist (“a new nation with his imprint”) or personal/egoistic reasons (“a new nation with his imprint”)?
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Why not both?
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I’m a bit puzzled. Making a request to the UN to have your country referred to by its name in its predominant official language seems like a perfectly cogent request; but requesting that the UN make your country’s name change in a different language entirely seems like a curious mixture of futile posturing and category error.
It would be odd(and, though not of serious concern given that it’s an attempt at norm enforcement being made up from a fair way down rather than the reverse) frankly kind of presumptuous to try that with any language; but it’s extra odd when the change request isn’t even compatible with that language’s alphabet; and when the language in question has no equivalent to the Académie française, with an official(if often ignored in practice) position as arbiter of that language.
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It’s been done for countless cities (Bombay to Mumbai, Peking to Beijing, Pusan to Busan), but I feel like those changes took time and a lot of PR, rather than just asking the UN.
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I suppose the other implication of English having more of a roiling gestalt hive mind than a governing body is that everyone is free to jump in and try to push it in their preferred direction; and that’s not impossible.
Even in the changes you describe, though, it looks like the party backing the change(whether deliberately or because they had no alternative) provided an English-convention substitute for the previous English term; rather than, as here, attempting to declare that the official Marathi name is now the official English name as well(sensibly, given that requiring Devanagari support would make an umlaut look like a trivial matter).
Peking and Beijing, same story; and they changed ‘Pusan’ to ’ Busan’ rather than trying to make ‘부산시’ fly as the expected English term.
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Both spellings will probably be used for quite some time, with countries and companies not wanting to upset anyone there using the new spelling in official communications.
My company has a factory there, and I will probably contine writing Turkey but also “Republic of Türkiye” in press releases.
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I assume it’s both polite and good practice to use whatever the local authorities prefer; it just seems extra weird that they would want “Republic of Türkiye”. I’d have imagined all English or all Turkish; as seems to be the usage with a fair few countries(eg. Germany is “The Federal Republic of Germany” on formal English-language occasions; “Bundesrepublik Deutschland” on German-language ones; but never “Bundesrepublik Germany”; and France is the “French Republic” or “République française”; but never “French République”).
It ultimately seems kind of churlish to argue at someone about what they want to be called, so I’d certainly categorize it as a low priority that I’d never mention outside of discussions of the topic; but it does rub the wrong way the same weird little language node that the fact that “television” was derived from a combination of Greek and Latin source words, rather than one or the other, rubs the wrong way.
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Possibly because Erdogan’s…innovative…theories on monetary policy make having both hard and soft shell tortillas less viable for the “why not both?” girl than in prior years…
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