India or Bharat?

[Grumble]

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/i ... break-link

India may soon rename to Bharat, Pakistan could claim the name India or at least the adjective Indian.

[nekomatic]

Ditching a colonial name seems fair enough, but if the replacement is politically controversial it feels like the international community should be allowed to sit on the proposal for a few years until it has a proper consensus behind it.

Also I worry it could go the way of motorway service stations where somebody realised one day that whatever they wrote on the form under ‘Name’ would go on the sign and now they’re all called things like MOTO M&S BURGER KING KFC RANDOM PHONE ACCESSORY SHOP. Booked your holiday for next year yet? Nah, we usually go to FRANCE EIFFEL TOWER LOUVRE CHEESE but we were wondering about somewhere different, maybe ITALY ART PIZZA LEANING TOWER RESURGENT FASCISM for a change.

[Grumble]

Ditching a colonial name seems fair enough, but if the replacement is politically controversial it feels like the international community should be allowed to sit on the proposal for a few years until it has a proper consensus behind it.

Also I worry it could go the way of motorway service stations where somebody realised one day that whatever they wrote on the form under ‘Name’ would go on the sign and now they’re all called things like MOTO M&S BURGER KING KFC RANDOM PHONE ACCESSORY SHOP. Booked your holiday for next year yet? Nah, we usually go to FRANCE EIFFEL TOWER LOUVRE CHEESE but we were wondering about somewhere different, maybe ITALY ART PIZZA LEANING TOWER RESURGENT FASCISM for a change.

I’m not sure the international community has a say, but it certainly seems politically controversial within (the country currently known as) India.

[IvanV]

Country renaming experience is a bit mixed. It is most successful when done at independence. And often seems to be different in English from other languages.

There was a string of successful cases where colonies changed their name at or close to independence, which applied broadly across all languages: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, Belize, Bangladesh, Moldova, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan. Some later changes that took hold were Burkina Faso and Benin. But Upper Volta and Dahomey were such obscure places they were quickly forgotten. A very recent change of this type is Eswatini. On the BBC we are still at the Eswatini-formerly-Swaziland stage I think. Probably obscure enough to get away with it fairly quickly.

Many more recent cases have been less successful, particularly when they have well-established names they are trying to drop.

Sri Lanka changed its name in 1972. It seems to have done it across languages. On Spanish and French Wikipedia, etc, the country is called Sri Lanka. But when I speak to people of other European languages, they often seem a bit unsure about Sri Lanka, and would normally refer to it with their own version of Ceylon, eg Ceilán in Spanish.

There was Congo (Léopoldville) which became Congo (Kinshasa), then Zaire and then Democratic Republic of Congo. As far as I can tell, in many languages people never really stopped calling it Congo or Congou or the like, or Congo (Kinshasa), so the long-term problem of confusion with Congo (Brazzaville), which was temporarily solved in English with Zaire, was never solved in other languages. Well, we tend to call it DRC as three letters in English, and reserve Congo for the other one. But still when you say Congo, you usually have to disambiguate. The change to Zaire being dictated by Mobuto Sese Seko, with local difficulties over what it said about who was ruling whom, wasn't very satisfactory. Neither Zaire nor Congo is geographically very satisfactory. Congo refers to a longstanding polity, the Kingdom of Kongo (1390 to 1914) which was substantially within the borders of what today is Angola. Its former capital M'banza-Kongo, ie Kongo City, is today the capital of Zaire Province, Angola.

Myanmar, formerly Burma, only seems to have changed its name in English, they don't even seem to have even tried in other languages. In Spanish, it's still Birmania, etc. In principle, I don't have any problem with Myanmar. I went there before it asked for the change, and when I was there, everything was Myanma(r) this Myanma(r) that. As far as I could see, and I asked people too, that was the country's actual long-standing name in Burmese. Burma is the colonial name that refers to the majority population group, the Burmans, who speak Burmese. There are some in-country Burma-name hold-outs in the political opposition, but that seems to be about not-doing-what-the-dictator-says, rather than a principled stand on the linguistic issue. When Suu Kyi, a Burma-advocate in opposition, was head of government for a few years, she didn't change it. But a problem with it as a name in English is that it isn't obvious to most of us how to pronounce it. It maybe needs a "how to pronounce Hyundai" type of advertising campaign, as it is the same issue. Myan-mar is two syllables. Also the R is silent even if you speak a rhotic form of English - there is no R in the Burmese, it's just there to indicate the vowel colour. Indeed they often spell it Myanma. Burma is so long known, that I think it will in practice be called Burma by many people for a long time.

Turkey has said it is now Türkiye. That seems to be English only as it still seems to be Turquía in Spanish, etc. So I think that's mainly about seeing if they can tell us what to do. If Turquía is Spanish for Türkiye, why isn't Turkey English for Türkiye? Most countries seem happy to accept that their name is different in different languages. But also it just isn't very practical. English people don't have a ü easily accessible on their keyboard, and mostly aren't very good at pronouncing ü so as to distinguish it from a u. Also I think few people are aware it is 3 syllables Türk-i-ye. And the k should be pronounced sh. So I expect people will carry on calling it Turkey while possibly using the Turkish spelling.

The Czech Republic has offered us Czechia to avoid the mouthful of The Czech Republic, but it isn't catching on. The problem is the lack of a one-word name for the country, when it could do with one. Several other languages already had a one-word name for it, and can carry on, so this is really only for English and other languages without a one-word name. There are historical reasons why there isn't a long-standing one-word name for Bohemia-and-Moravia-and-a-little-bit-of-Silesia, not even in Czech, as an independent country within those borders is of recent creation. It had a brief existence within very similar borders during the German occupation in WW2, when it was called The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Unfortunately Czechia doesn't really slip off the tongue for English speakers. Having a Czech wife, we don't use it, we often say just "Czech". Historians long referred to The Czech Lands for this area. So I offer Czechland as a possible more attractive alternative, but maybe that's as crap as Czechia.

[Martin Y]

Reminds me of the old TV show Lovejoy which, back in the '90s, had a number of episodes set in what's now Czechia and Ian McShane's character referred to the country as 'Czecho' throughout. That struck me as a really good informal name which might catch on, but didn't solve the problem of what it should properly be called.

[insignificant]

I don't have any difficulty with Czechia

Their Eurovision entry this year being one of my favorites helped

[IvanV]

Ditching a colonial name seems fair enough...

Although India was the colonial name for the colony now divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it's a much older name than that. India was called precisely that in Hellenistic Greek (post 300 BCE), and was Indos in Ancient Greek. The word was later borrowed into Latin, and spread widely from these languages. The ancients didn't mean precisely the Indian subcontinent by it, not knowing about that. Rather it was where you got to if you carried on through Persia, and might therefore refer to all of S and SE Asia. That concept resulted in the name Indonesia meaning Indian Islands, which was also once referred to as the East Indies. And of course the West Indies got similarly named due to thinking they were off the east coast of Asia too, but more quickly got to by going west.

Bharat is the present name for India in Hindi, and doubtless some or many other local languages. It became widely used as the local name for India in the 19th century, at that time referring to the larger 19th C "India". And it has a long history as a term for what is now North India.

So this isn't about changing the name of India, it's about stopping foreigners using their own name for India. That is likewise what Myanmar and Turkiye were up to. There are a few other countries where the local name is rather different from the names used elsewhere. They include China, Japan, Finland, Germany, Greece, Morocco, Croatia, Albania, Georgia, and some of those have become independent from larger entities at some stage. (Though what's really odd about Turkiye is that to most English speakers they already call it that, they just don't spell it like that.)

[Grumble]

Ditching a colonial name seems fair enough...

Although India was the colonial name for the colony now divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it's a much older name than that. India was called precisely that in Hellenistic Greek (post 300 BCE), and was Indos in Ancient Greek. The word was later borrowed into Latin, and spread widely from these languages. The ancients didn't mean precisely the Indian subcontinent by it, not knowing about that. Rather it was where you got to if you carried on through Persia, and might therefore refer to all of S and SE Asia. That concept resulted in the name Indonesia meaning Indian Islands, which was also once referred to as the East Indies. And of course the West Indies got similarly named due to thinking they were off the east coast of Asia too, but more quickly got to by going west.

Bharat is the present name for India in Hindi, and doubtless some or many other local languages. It became widely used as the local name for India in the 19th century, at that time referring to the larger 19th C "India". And it has a long history as a term for what is now North India.

So this isn't about changing the name of India, it's about stopping foreigners using their own name for India. That is likewise what Myanmar and Turkiye were up to. There are a few other countries where the local name is rather different from the names used elsewhere. They include China, Japan, Finland, Germany, Greece, Morocco, Croatia, Albania, Georgia, and some of those have become independent from larger entities at some stage. (Though what's really odd about Turkiye is that to most English speakers they already call it that, they just don't spell it like that.)

Presumably the name derives from the Indus river?

[IvanV]

Presumably the name derives from the Indus river?

Specifically from the Ancient Iranian name for that river which was Hindu. In Sanskrit it was Sindhu, consistent with the s>h sound change when Iranian languages split off Indian ones. The deep origin is sadly banal, meaning boundary. So in deep meaning India and Ukraine have the same name.

Another common banal country name, generally first applied by outsiders, is Foreign: appears as Wales/Gaul/Wallachia/Galicia (both of them), seen also in walnut which is thus a foreign nut. Polish and Hungarian think Italy is Foreign: for example the Polish term for Italy is Włochy, which is visibly similar to Wallachia; the Hungarian is Olaszország, which is a bit less obvious - it helps to realise that -ország is the common Hungarian country name ending, as in Magyarország their name for their own country.

[dyqik]

Presumably the name derives from the Indus river?

Specifically from the Ancient Iranian name for that river which was Hindu. In Sanskrit it was Sindhu, consistent with the s>h sound change when Iranian languages split off Indian ones. The deep origin is sadly banal, meaning boundary. So in deep meaning India and Ukraine have the same name.

Another common banal country name, generally first applied by outsiders, is Foreign: appears as Wales/Gaul/Wallachia/Galicia (both of them), seen also in walnut which is thus a foreign nut. Polish and Hungarian think Italy is Foreign: for example the Polish term for Italy is Włochy, which is visibly similar to Wallachia; the Hungarian is Olaszország, which is a bit less obvious - it helps to realise that -ország is the common Hungarian country name ending, as in Magyarország their name for their own country.

If we're going all etymological, then England is the land of the narrow (probably "shallow") people (or fishermen who fish shallow waters), and Britain is the island of tattooed people.

[Grumble]

Presumably the name derives from the Indus river?

Specifically from the Ancient Iranian name for that river which was Hindu. In Sanskrit it was Sindhu, consistent with the s>h sound change when Iranian languages split off Indian ones. The deep origin is sadly banal, meaning boundary. So in deep meaning India and Ukraine have the same name.

Another common banal country name, generally first applied by outsiders, is Foreign: appears as Wales/Gaul/Wallachia/Galicia (both of them), seen also in walnut which is thus a foreign nut. Polish and Hungarian think Italy is Foreign: for example the Polish term for Italy is Włochy, which is visibly similar to Wallachia; the Hungarian is Olaszország, which is a bit less obvious - it helps to realise that -ország is the common Hungarian country name ending, as in Magyarország their name for their own country.

If we're going all etymological, then England is the land of the narrow (probably "shallow") people (or fishermen who fish shallow waters), and Britain is the island of tattooed people.

And Cymri is Our Land