I have to agree with the first part of this regarding England being used to mean the UK there is another case with the Netherlands Most times I ve hard people mention the country at least in the UK it s with regard to football And the vast majority of people and even some of their own fans from the Netherlands call the country Holland In fact I have met a few people who did not realise Holland and the Netherlands were the same country This does not mean it deserves to become the name of the country simply on popular convention A redirect is a great idea it teaches people that the name they are using is outdated or incorrect and may in some way help the official name become more widespread Having East Timor as the name of the lead article is misleading it appears to unintentionally perhaps legitimise East Timor as the correct name offering the fact that Timor Leste is the official name as a kind of afterthought Timor Leste is the name of the country East Timor is the former name Why is there even any debate Of course if a country changes its name it will take time for it to catch on When Upper Volta changed to Burkina Faso when Dahomey changed to Benin when Rhodesia changed to Zimbabwe it takes time for people to adjust to new names it shouldn t take time for encyclopedias to follow suit as information providers they should be immediate in their changing of the name to reflect the actual reality of the world and not what some people still mistakenly believe the country to be named