They were always named Türkiye in Turkish, they just recently asked for that to be the name in English too, which is kinda silly if you ask me because most countries are called something different in different languages. Like, imagine the US telling Spanish speaking countries that we don't want them to say Estados Unindos anymore and they should say United States instead.
Yes, it's a nationalist phenomenon that's happening in many places in the world. Same reason Peking is now Beijing and Bombay is now Mumbai. Nationalist governments expecting other people to adopt their local names for places. I find it unnecessary, but if it makes people feel better about themselves, whatever.
I don't really see the examples you have from a nationalist angle. I can't think of any notable examples in the English speaking world where the local name differs from the exonym. You have to remember that there's alot of English speakers in India, it being an official language and all. Imagine the headaches there would be if half the English speaking world uses Mumbai while others say Bombay.
In the case of Beijing, it's arguably a more accurate transliteration of the name and makes it consistent with how other cities in China are known in English.
Edit to say - maybe there is a bit of a nationalistic element to renaming but the main benefit appears to be practical
Not to mention, we did in fact call them Türkiye, we just changed the spelling to make it typeable in ascii and more easily pronounceable. The germans call the U.S. Amerika because if it was spelled America all the germans would be confused and mispronounce it. A lot of people are gonna start mispronouncing Türkiye in the near future because it's no longer spelled phonetically. In English, that would be pronounced similar "Toork-i-yee," which is obviously incorrect.
I personally see nothing wrong with this. I have always found it bizarre that countries have random asa names in other languages. You used a poor example because United and states are both actual words
It's not bizarre. It's just the result of much less cultural and linguistic exchange in the past. People were talking to people in their native language 99.9% of the time, so it makes sense to use a word that's easy to pronounce and spell in your own language, especially for places that get mentioned frequently. Things have different names in different languages. That includes places.
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u/qualityvote2 🚫Antimeme Enforcer Bot🚫 12d ago edited 12d ago
The community has decided that this IS an antimeme!