Talk:Endonym and exonym

message: the are called by an exonym and i sort of think that it is wrong because we should respect their name and not just go around calling them a name that we made up for them and i think that it wrong!
: Do you mean Palestinians - the people of Palestine? Can you explain why you think using this name is wrong? Frankieparley 06:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What name do they prefer? —Tamfang (talk) 19:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Palistines

message: Almost all nativ tribes and people of America have exonyms, off the top of my head: inca, ahh...--145.94.41.95 22:02, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Native tribes and peoples of America

message: Recently included content relating to the conference has been cut entirely (and not transferred to the UN conference article as indicated in my edit summary), with the invitation to tidy it up and include in that article. RealityCheck 11:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: UN conference on the standardization of geographical names

message: I'd like to replace the current intro with the following. I'll go ahead and make the change if no objection is lodged:
An exonym is a name for a place or people that is different from the name used in the native language. For example, London is known as Londres in Spanish, French and Portuguese; Londra in Italian and Londýn in Czech and Slovak and Londyn in Polish. The opposite of an exonym is an endonym. Roma is an endonym, while Rome is an exonym.
The use of exonyms is often controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms; for example, Roma people prefer that term over exonyms like Gypsy. People may also seek to avoid exonyms due to historical sensitivities, as in the case of German language German names for Polish and Czech places.
In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid these kind of problems. For example, it is now common for Latin Americans to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora. 
But 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.
(External links section:)
*UN document discussion 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.
:Mwalcoff, this would be a good improvement. I think a revised version should maintain the point somewhere that an exonym is one which has been assigned by outsiders; the London example is helpful and could more explicitly state something along the lines of "exonyms for London include..."; and in outlining the controversy I think we need to retain the point that whether a term is considered to be an exonym can depend on how widely the concept is defined. RealityCheck 03:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. Do you have an example of the word "exonym" being used with the narrower definition? Thanks -- Mwalcoff 23:39, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I've added a non-cognate example in the intro as these tend to give most controversy.  Also renamed the page. Joestynes 10:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better intro 

message: The article should talk about this, too. For example, the Megleno-Romanians no longer use a word derived from "romanus", but use "vlaşi", derived from Vlach, which was originally an exonym. bogdan 11:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  An exonym becoming an endonym 

message: Changed Cymry to correct spelling, Cymru, which of course does not mean 'Welsh,' but Wales.
         Those are two different words and both are correct.212.76.37.191 22:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cymry? 

message: 58.179.72.140 changed "exonyms" to "endonyms" for the titles of a couple lists. This change looks wrong for the one that now says "List of English endonyms for peoples" because the English is the exonym. Otherwise, I would agree that the title should say these are endonyms because it really is a lookup for speakers of English that would perhaps only know the exonym already. Maybe just removing "English" makes more sense for that one table. Skapare 04:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Titles of lists 

message: Some of the exonym lists are not properly so-called, I think.  Definitionally: if a region's population shifts, do the former population's toponyms become exonyms? Think Roman Empire, Kaliningrad Oblast, etc. If a region is inhabited by one population but forms part of a state dominated by another, are the local's toponyms endonyms and the "official" ones imposed by the state's majority exonyms, or vice versa, or something else? Think Brittany, South Tirol, Catalonia, Kosovo, etc.  If a region is inhabited by multiple populations, whose is the endonym and whose the exonym? Think Transylvania, portions of Moldova, Lithuania, Ukraine, even Los Angeles vs. Los Ángeles. And how do we know which population is the majority.
Given that I believe some of the lists of exonyms are not truly so, it may be better to rename the lot to XXXian names of places in YYY, leaving the endo- vs. exo- debate to the articles themselves: pretty clear that English names of places in Lithuania, say, are exonyms, but less clear that German or Polish names of places in Lithuania is so, and the status of Russian or Belarussian names of places in Lithuania is murkier still, as is the status of Samogitian names of places in Lithuania. 
Any thoughts about name changing the lists? 
Carlossuarez46 20:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing names of lists, a proposal 

message: Surely the endonyms Cymru (Wales), Cymro (Welshman), Cymry (Welsh people, the Welsh) all derivez from cwm "valley" NOT "comrade". needs changing —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.78.78.41 (talk) 18:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wales

message: I'm not sure if this is even a real word (see Talk:Ethnonym), but if it is, it refers to exactly the same thing as this article. Merge - Jack (talk) 10:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: oppose ethnonym is a word (Talk:Ethnonym was questioning endonym, not ethnonym).  Ethnonym is the same as demonym and should merge there instead. The exonym-endonym distinction is a subissue deserving its separate page. jnestorius(talk) 12:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[Ethnonym]] 

message: Would it be possible to have the non-English words in some of these lists at least transliterated to English? I mean, it's great that the endonym of Russians is "Русские" but since I can't read Cyrillic characters, I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce this. It's bad enough when I don't know the pronounciation rules of languages that use Latin characters (i.e., Dutch)--with other languages I'm totally lost (and I doubt I'm the only one). :) RobertM525 09:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-English words 

message: autonym is by far the more common term. endonym does not even occur in most dictionaries. I would suggest that the article use the more common terminology. – ishwar  (speak) 04:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: autonym

message: I'd like to discuss the possibility of controversial use of endonyms, rather than of exonyms. The ethnic group that often use the endonym "Romani" for themselves, or a variant thereof, are often labelled with an exonym ("Gypsy", "Gitano", etc) based on the incorrect supposition that they originated in Egypt. These exonyms are inappropriate and, as they are frequently applied prejoratively, it is understandable that an endonym is preferred. The endonym is said to derive from the word "rom"/"rrom", in the people's own language, meaning "husband", with "romni"/"rromni" meaning "wife". But the Wikipedia article for the Romani people says that "there are no historical proofs to clarify the etymology of these words". I hear Romanians complaining that they are being associated with this group because the names are similar, and claiming that this group's endonym came into being because its members often come from families that settled in Romania. Is this scenario, their endonym therefore ultimately derives from the some source as the Romanians' - from "Romans" - which is at least as inappropriate as the exonym for this group, considering the lack of any Latin connection. I have no axe to grind - I have never personally had any problems with either ethnic group. But can anybody throw light on the historical basis of using "Romani" as an endonym? Frankieparley 06:50, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some 12-13 years after this section was posted, contrary to "lack of any Latin connection", as of this date the article Romanian language presently states "Romanian is a part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin, which was separated from the Western Romance during the 5th–8th centuries." In the meantime, naturally, the article Romani people and its discussion of nomenclature appear to be much edited since 2007, with the quoted "no historical proofs" now removed. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:19, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversial use of endonyms? "Roma": from which origin? 

message: Many Chinese endonyms have successfully become 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 - i.e. Peking (duck, opera, etc.), Canton, Tsintao, etc.
:I'm not really happy with this paragraph. Guangdong is an exonym? Peking and Canton are, but Guangdong and Qingdao? --85.181.225.129 (talk) 15:10, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's the contrast Qingdao vs Tsintao, Guangdong vs Canton. Example of former exonyms, which have successfully become English endonyms. --Atitarev (talk) 09:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And English Beijing has already started to become a real English exonym. Many speakers now prefer Beizhing to Beijing (pronunication only), for whatever reason. Maybe hyperforeignization. --85.181.225.44 (talk) 19:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Many English-speakers also get the tones wrong, too.  Or does the definition of 'exonym' disregard differences in pronunciation that are forced by differences in phonemic repertoire? (If so, most of the entries in every List of Framistani exonyms ought to be omitted.) —Tamfang (talk) 02:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

text: I'd change become in the first line to replaced. —Tamfang (talk) 20:14, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese "exonyms" 

message: I've removed this statement in the intro:
Some languages use the same spelling as the endonym but change the pronunciation, thus making it an exonym. The English and German pronunciations of Paris, for example, are different from the French one (where the s is silent in modern French), though it is spelled the same in all three languages. 
I'd like to see a source on this if it was to be put back in the intro.  While it is true that Paris is pronounced differently, most languages sharing the same orthography pronounce their letter differently.  If the statement is to be taken at face value, couldn't we make the arguement that many toponyms in Scotland are exonyms when pronounced in American English, that most Latin American toponyms are exonyms in Castillian Spanish and vice versa?  And is Japanese for New York, "Nyū Yōku" an exonym even though it follows standard transliteration practice and is the closest aproximation possible in Japanese? o (talk) 13:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In older French, the s in Paris was not silent. Another example would be Praha. English Prague and German Prag conserve a g that used to be there in Czech. --85.181.225.44 (talk) 19:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronounciation and exonym 

message: The missing citation and example farm tags are very relevant. The article has three references, none of them to clearly reliable sources. This is much too few for that amount of text. Secondly most of the article consists of unsourced examples rather than scholarly explanations of the differences between endonyms and exonyms. The tags will have to remain in place untill these issues have been adressed. (for the record I didn't place the tags myself)·Maunus·ƛ· 22:29, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tags

message: One of the matters attended to by the working group was to polish the definitions of exonym and endonym. Not that we must or should use what anyone with the UN suggests for UN purposes, I include these here in an effort to help someone improve the article as the working group's definitions seem to me more accurate and far less awkward than what we currently have in the introduction. 
Presumably, what is currently at http://www.zrc-sazu.si/ungegn/WGE/exonyms.htm are the new definitions:
Definitions agreed:
*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.
— RVJ (talk) 02:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing that out, Mr. RVJ. If there are UN definitions they should certainly take precedence. I would even quote them and cite the authority. Why let the editors do it when it has authoritatively been done? We are not pretending this is OUR work, we are using the authoritative works of society as a whole. Only the scholars get to contribute original works and they do it in their own books and journal articles. All we want to do is bring it to the general public. This article is going on my list but I may not get to it right away. It is in fact overwordy, often illogical, and lacks proper refs. If you can improve it (which should not be hard to do), go right ahead!Dave (talk) 12:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Newer, "polished" definitions of exonym and endonym by UN Working Group on Exonyms

message: A section could be made about how some peoples name themselves "men" or "free men", marking the rest as "non-human" or "slaves".
Examples are Franks, Roma people, Thai, Inuit.
--Error (talk) 23:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Error, error. Many peoples call themselves some form of a term that originally meant "the people" with all the favorable implications that could be loaded on, such as "free", "kinsman", "countrymen" "our people" and so on. I do not believe there was originally any intent to mark others as non-free. Those are developments that happen when one people conquers another or holds captives or slaves from another. Then the big imaginations of the conquerors get going. It is customary I do believe for exploiters to denigrate the exploited, probably as part of some sort of natural conscience-salving. If there is anyone without a conscience we tag him/her as a genetic misfit and either lock him/her up for further study of execute him/her forthwith. It makes it a lot easier if that person can be shown to be subhuman. So to the 3rd reich the world was full of "swine", but why pick on them? The whole rest of the world does it too, including your culture, whatever that may be. We have all kinds of strange characters on our cultural stages depending on the circumstances. We don't want to become paranoid about this or exaggerate it or give it undue importance. I'm a free man not because anyone else whatever is a slave but because I assert my own freedom. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave not because anyone else is unfree or cowardly but because we choose to assert that value. Come on now, do you really think the writer of that national song wanted to underscore the unfreedom and unbravery that others might have? Similarly Deutschland ueber alles does not mean the Germans thought they were a superior race. It only meant you should put your country first. We don't want to be paranoid, Mr. error, we only want to be accurate and what you propose is not accurate. Be a good fellow and rethink it, will you? Thanks.Dave (talk) 12:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fittingly, as I recall, "Deutsch" comes from a word denoting "the people", or in essence, "us". "German" comes from Latin and suggests people outside the empire, or in essence, "them". That's kind of how it works. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It's well-known in ethnology that self-designations of any kind of groups are commonly, if not usually, decidedly positive, even flattering, while designations of other groups are commonly pejorative. Therefore, the typical self-designation means something like "the original people" or even "the real people", or even something boastful (especially with warlike tribes), while terms given to outsiders, at least if they speak a clearly different language, tend to mean essentially something like "people who talk funny" or "stammerers". Insiders are perceived as perfectly normal and decent, foreigners as strange deviants with customs that are looked upon as suspect and inferior. (By the way, the "reclaiming" or reappropriation of pejorative exonyms is not a modern phenomenon, there are historical precedents such as the Geuzen.) Not wanting to delve into the whole "PC rewriting of history" discussion, but "primitive tribes" should not be romanticised. Of course, to give their ways as justification to indulge in racism yourself would be a severely flawed excuse. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Humans" as an endonym 

message: Readers of this page may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Albanian exonyms, relating to one of a number of similar lists that were previously discussed in 2007 at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of European exonyms.--Arxiloxos (talk) 18:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Albanian exonyms]]

message: English and French still use the plural form of the name, as Greek 'officially' did until katharevousa was finally abandoned in the 1970s. Pamour (talk) 08:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Athens 

message: Chinese Language is not written in alphabets, but in Hanzi. When writing Chinese city names in English, one needs transliteration or romanisation, where more than one standards exist. Hanyu Pinyin is currently the most popular, because the "PRC" makes it standard and replaces standards used by the Republic of China Government. Hence it is inappropriate to say Peking (北京 using Chinese Postal Map Romanization, officially used by the ROC) is an English exonym but Beijing (北京 using Hanyu Pinyin, officially used by the "PRC") is a Chinese endonym; both should be classified into the same class. Unmistakable English exonyms of Chinese cities include Canton (廣州, Guangzhou), Port Arthur (旅順, Lüshunkou). --Jabo-er (talk) 06:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese transliteration 

message: The part about Chinese place names was confusing to me. I think the old English names should be mentioned along with the new Hanyu pinyin names, not everyone knows that Canton is Guangdong.
And the way the paragraph is structured, it is not clear if the Republic of China (Taiwan) has also made Hanyu Pinyin the standard in 1979 or not. It turns out it has done so, but only in 2008, and in practise nobody uses it for place names. So while "Beijing" has replaced "Peking" in the PRC, "Jinmen" has not yet replaced "Kinmen" in Taiwan.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.6.39.147 (talk) 08:30, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese<->English and Hanyu Pinyin 

message: Those cities mentioned are usually still called "Naples" and "Turin" in England, although the football team is usually called Napoli. Juventus are far more famous here than Torino, if you ask someone in England "which city are Juventus from" the reply will be "Turin". Of course this doesn't affect Milan, whose team officially uses the English name. It is also worth mentioning one obsolete English exonym that survives mainly as the name of a football team: River Plate.Walshie79 (talk) 00:30, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Italian cities and football

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Unless requested sources are added in the next month or so, I will be deleting huge chunks of unsourced POV & conjecture here. Boxes look awful. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 10:10, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Huge chunks need to go

message: The English name "Athens" is derived from ancient Greek (not from modern Greek, as is misleadingly implied in the article).  The plural "-s" ending reflects the fact that the Ancient Greek name was plural (while the modern Greek name is singular -- in ancient Greek, the singular form was the name of the goddess Athena, not of the city)... AnonMoos (talk) 12:53, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Derivation of English "Athens" 

message: While many of the names for London are true exonyms (where the spelling in latin script is different), are the exonyms in Armenian, Persian and Vietnamese true exonyms rather than standard transcriptions? The Armenian rendered in latin script is "London".OsFish (talk) 01:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm guessing it's a difference in pronunciation. /lɔn.dɔn/ is distinct from /lʌn.dən/ --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 10:42, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: But does that count as an exonym? Is Edinburgh an exonym if written by an American because they tend to say (excuse lack of IPA)  Edinboro rather than Edinbra? OsFish (talk) 06:34, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of exonyms for London 

message: Cisgender/Cisgenderism is an Exonym. It was given to non-trans people by Trans people. Should it be mentioned here? Fishchaircan (talk) 09:07, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Groups historically originally named by their opponents include Quakers, UK Whigs and Tories, and Mitnagdim.  It doesn't have much to do with "exonyms" as defined for the purposes of this article. AnonMoos (talk) 10:40, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, it was coined by a cisgender woman, and is used by cisgender people to describe themselves.OsFish (talk) 10:11, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cisgender?  

message: Tye original research template was added here, but I'm not sure where the concern is. Newystats (talk) 22:35, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research? 

message: In the page Gitanos, the words endonym and exonym both link to this page. The 'floater' text you see when you hover over the word uses the same first sentence of this article for both words - this means the definition for 'endonym' is correct, but the definition for 'exonym' is wrong, as it's giving the endonym definition a second time. This seems like a Wikipedia-wide issue, but is there any way to fix it for this page specifically? (Apologies for any format issues, I'm a noob) 2600:6C50:7F:B4BC:9186:A98F:E498:8C4D (talk) 07:24, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm really not sure what you mean. This is the page for both exonym and endonym. The floater text for both "exonym" and "endonym" on that page says "Endonym and Exonym".  I can't see the problem. If there were separate sections on this page for exonym and endonym, we could redirect to the specific section, but there aren't. So the current situation looks OK. Have I misunderstood something? OsFish (talk) 10:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Floater text when highlighted is confusing?