Endonym and exonym: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 09:43, 1 October 2007
An exonym is a name for a place that is not used within that place by the local inhabitants, or a name for a people or language that is not used by the people or language to which it refers. The name used by the people or locals themselves is an endonym or autonym. For example, Deutschland is an endonym; Germany is an English exonym for the same place; and Allemagne is a French exonym. Similarly, Spanish is an exonym for the name of the language; speakers of Spanish use español or castellano. In the Spanish language, inglés is an exonym for either an English male person or the English language.
Exonyms may derive from distinct roots as in the case of Deutschland, Germany and Allemagne mentioned above, or may be cognate words which have diverged in pronunciation or orthography. For example, London is known as Londres in French, Spanish and Portuguese; Londen in Dutch, Londra in Italian, Romanian and Turkish; Londýn in Czech and Slovak; Londyn in Polish; Lundúnir in Icelandic; and Lontoo in Finnish. 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), though it is spelled the same in all three languages.
Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed (i.e., from a third language). For example, Slovenian uses the native exonyms Dunaj (Vienna) and Benetke (Venice), but the exonyms Kijev (Kyiv) and Vilna (Vilnius), borrowed from Russian and German, respectively.
Tendencies in the development of exonyms
Exonyms develop for places of special significance for speakers of the language of the exonym. Consequently, most European capitals have English exonyms, e.g. Athens (Αθήνα/Athína), Belgrade (Београд/Beograd), Bucharest (Bucureşti), Brussels (Bruxelles, Brussel), Copenhagen (København), Moscow (Москва/Moskva), Nicosia (Λευκωσία/Lefkosía), Prague (Praha), Rome (Roma), Tirana (Tiranë), Vienna (Wien) or Warsaw (Warszawa). For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades. Livorno, to take an instance, was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British navy. Not far away, a minor port on the same sea like Rapallo never received an exonym.
In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal name of Graecus (Greek), the Russians used the village name of Chechen, medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus, a word for Hell, to produce Tartar), and the Magyar invaders were equated to the 500 years earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were appellated Hungarians.
Most productively, the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire apparently encountered a Latin-speaking Celtic tribe named the Volcae and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for all non-Germanic speakers; thence, the names Wallachia, Vlachs, Wallonia, Walloons, Wales, Wallasey, and even the Polish name for Italy, Włochy. Sometimes, nicknames or pejorative appellations became standard exonyms; the Slavic peoples erroneously referred to the Germanic Europeans as "mute", as their languages were incompatible, and the Russian word for Germans even today is still that, nemtsy. The Serbian word is homophonous to the Russian but is spelled "Nemci", while the Croatian word has adopted the form of "Nijemci".
White settlers in South Africa thought the Khoi-San natives gabbled nonsense syllables, so they called them Hottentots. Two millennia earlier, the Greeks thought all non-Greek speakers spoke gibberish like bar-bar-bar, so they called them all barbarians, which eventually gave rise to the exonym Berber.
In the late 20th century the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in a pejorative way; for example, Roma people prefer that term over exonyms like Gypsy (from Egypt), or the French term bohème (from Bohemia), or the Spanish term flamenco (from Flanders). People may also seek to avoid exonyms due to historical sensitivities, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places which used to be ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/Gdansk), much like Russian placenames being used for locations once under its control (e.g. Kiev/Kyiv).
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 Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora, still in use for types of cat, goat and rabbit.
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."
In English, attempts to skirt a familiar exonym in order to accurately reproduce an endonym often appear pretentious, a device used to comic effect in E.F. Benson's novels concerning Miss Mapp and Lucia.
Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling and word category. The endonym may include sounds which are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over the years, phonetic changes may happen to the endonym either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym. In many cases no standardized spelling is available either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalyzed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be simply a plural noun and does not extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English which has a propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. The attempt to use the endonym thus has a bizarre-sounding result.
The name for a language and a people are often different terms, of course, which is a complication for an outsider.
Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country:
- In 1985 the government of Côte d'Ivoire requested that the country's French name be used in all languages instead of exonyms such as Ivory Coast, so that Côte d'Ivoire is now the official English name of that country in the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee (see Name of Côte d'Ivoire).
- The Ukrainian government maintains that the capital of Ukraine should be called Kyiv in English because it considers the traditional English exonym Kiev to be derived from the Russian name Kiyev (Киев) (see Kiev or Kyiv?).
- The Belarusian government argues that the endonym Belarus should be used in all languages and has been rather successful in English, where the former exonym Byelorussia, still used with reference to the Soviet Republic, has virtually died out, whereas in other languages exonyms like German Weißrußland, Danish Hviderusland, Swedish Vitryssland, Dutch Wit-Rusland, Icelandic Hvíta-Rússland (all literally 'White Russia') or French Biélorussie are still much more common than Belarus (see History of the name Belarus).
- In 1989 the military regime of Burma requested that the English name of the country be Myanmar, with Myanma as the adjective of the country and Bamar as the name of the inhabitants (see Explanation of the names of Burma/Myanmar).
Confusion with renaming
Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with the results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg, which became Petrograd in 1914, Leningrad in 1924, and Saint Petersburg again in 1991. In this case, although St Petersburg has a German etymology, this was never a German exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam, the Dutch name of New York City until 1664, is not its Dutch exonym.
The old place names outdated after renaming are afterwards often used as historicisms. Consequently, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad, not the Siege of St. Petersburg, because at that time (1941-1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad, as it has been called since 1946. Sometimes, however, historical names are deliberately not used because of nationalist tendencies to linguistically lay claim to a city's past. As a case in point, the Slovakian article on the 1805 Peace of Pressburg does not use either of the city's names then in use (the Slovakian Prešporok or the official, that is German, Pressburg) but today's name Bratislava that became the city's name only in 1919. It's interested, that only for 2 months (in 1918) was the name of Bratislava Wilson city (the Slovakian Wilsonovo mesto) in the memory of Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth President of the United States.
The name Madras, now Chennai, may be a special case. When the city was first settled by Englishmen, in the early 1600s, both names were in use. Possibly they referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym.
Likewise, Istanbul is still called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολη) in Greek, despite the name having been changed in Turkish (and other languages) between 1923 and 1930.
Orthographic exonymy in languages with phonetic spelling
There are at least three known languages in Europe in which the use of seeming exonyms (in terms of spelling but not necessarily pronunciation) for places and people is actually the norm and not an exception: Latvian, Lithuanian and Serbian, all having Latin-based script, transcribe foreign proper names whenever necessary, including those originally written in Latin script. The reasons are the respective nations' preference for their own consistent phonetic spelling and the need to add native inflectional endings to most nouns. The resulting advantage is that reading and spelling in these languages remain easy (knowledge of how to spell any unadapted foreign words is not required); a disadvantage is that foreigners may erroneously complain that their names have been "misspelled". In reality, the phonetic transcription is often more correct: e.g., Varšava, Varšuvas, Varšava (in Latvian, Lithuanian and Serbian, respectively), with [v] and [ʃ], is phonetically closer to the original Polish Warszawa than the English Warsaw [wɔːrsɔː].
List of English endonyms for peoples
 | This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
| Exonym | Endonym |
|---|---|
| Albanian | Shqiptarë ("Eagles") |
| Arabs | al-`Arab (in Arabic, العرب) |
| Argentinian(s) or Argentines | Argentinos |
| Armenians | Hayer (Հայեր) |
| Berbers | Amazigh (singular), Imazighen (plural), spelt as Amaziγ (Imaziγen) |
| Basque | Euskaldunak |
| Brazilian(s) | Brasileiro(s) |
| Catalan(s), Catalonian(s) | Català (singular), Catalans (plural). "Catalonian" refers to persons, and "Catalan" refers to objects related with Catalonia. |
| Cherokee(s) | Tsalagi |
| Cheyenne(s) | Tsistsista ("People") |
| Chilean(s) | Chileno (masc.)/Chilena (fem.) |
| Chinese | Zhōngguó rén (中国人 (simpl.) 中國人 (trad.), "People of the Middle Kingdom") or Huá rén (華人) |
| Cornish | Kernowek, Kernewek, Curnoack |
| Croats | Hrvati |
| Czechs | Češi |
| Danes | Danskere |
| Dutch | Nederlanders ("Lowlanders") |
| Ecuadorians | Ecuatorianos ("Equatorians") |
| Ancient Egyptians | rmţ km·t ("People of the Black Land") |
| Modern Egyptians | Maṣreyyīn (Egyptian Vernacular) (مصريين) |
| Eskimo | Inuit or Yupik (both meaning "People"; two distinct but related groups) |
| Estonians | eestlased |
| Etruscans | Rasenna |
| Filipino | Pilipino, Pinoy (informal, the suffix -oy denoting a diminutive or term of endearment) |
| Finns | suomalaiset (root: suomalais-, singular suomalainen "a Finn") |
| French | Français ("Francish") |
| Georgians | Kartveli Eri (ქართველი ერი) or Kartvelebi (ქართველები) |
| Germans | Deutsche |
| Greeks | Έλληνες (Ellines, Hellènes) |
| Greenlanders | Kalaallit in Greenlandic |
| Gypsies | Roma, Sinti |
| Hawaiians | Kānaka maoli |
| Hittite, Hittites, Hittish | Neshumanash (Ne·esh·umana·ash: "This-many twinsom-one", where umun in Emesal: "fellow"), Neshumnesh (Ne·esh·umin·esh: "This-many twinsoms-many") for its kinsfolk; Hattic: Neshili (Ne·esh·ili: "This-many-ish") for its speech and speakers[1][2] |
| Hungarians | Magyarok |
| Icelanders | Íslendingar |
| The Iroquois | Haudenosaunee ("The League of Peace and Power") |
| Israelis | Yiśrā'elīm (ישראלים) |
| Japanese | Nihonjin (日本人, E. "Sunspringfolk", L. "Solorigopuo") |
| Jews | Yehūdīm (יהודים) |
| South Koreans | Hanguksaram (한국사람) or Hangugin (한국인/韓國人) |
| North Koreans | Chosŏnsaram (조선사람) |
| Lapps | sámit or sápmelaččat |
| Lithuanians | Lietuviai |
| Mohawk(s) | Kanienkeha ("Flint people") |
| Mordvins | Erzya and Moksha (Two closely related peoples with two separate literary languages,) |
| Moroccan | Maghrabi (مغربي) ("Westerners") |
| Norwegians | Nordmenn ("North men") |
| Persians | Īrānīān (in Persian, ايرانيان) |
| Poles | Polacy ("Plainsmen") |
| Portuguese | Portugueses |
| Puerto Ricans | puertorriqueños, riqueños, puertorros (informal), boricua (Lokono "The one of the Altive Lord's land") |
| Russians | Русские, Russcjè |
| Romanians | Români |
| Quechua | Runa ("People") |
| Serbs | Срби/Srbi |
| Seri people | Comcaac (phonetically [koŋˈkɑːk]); singular: Cmiique (phonetically [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ]) |
| Sioux | Dakota or Lakota ("Allies") |
| Slovaks | Slováci |
| Slovenes, Slovenians | Slovenci |
| Spanish, Spaniards | Españoles |
| Sumerians | Un[ga] Sangi[ga] (Un[·ga] Sang·ngi[·ga]: "Folk [such of the] Head-black [such]")[1] |
| Swedes | Svenskar |
| Swiss | Schweizer (German) / Suisses (French) / Svizzeri (Italian) / Schwiizer, Schwyzer (Swiss German); all derived from the name of the canton of Schwyz |
| Turks | Türkler |
| Venezuelans | Venezolanos |
| Vlachs | Român/Rumân Romanian; Armân/Rumân Aromanian; Rumân/Rumâr Istro-Romanians ("Romans") |
List of English exonyms for German toponyms
List of creators of exonyms
| Exonym | Creator |
|---|---|
| Byzantine Empire | Hieronymus Wolf, popularized by Montesquieu |
| Sumer | Akkadians |
List of country endonyms
| Exonym | Endonym |
|---|---|
| Algeria | al-Jazā’ir (الجزائر) ("The Islands") |
| Armenia | Hayastan (Հայաստան: "the land of Haik"); see Armenia: Origin of the name |
| Aztec Empire | Mexìcâ (Mexihcah) or Tenochca |
| Bhutan | Druk Yul ("Dragon Land" in Dzongkha) |
| The Byzantine Empire | Romania (Pωμανια). Derived from the "Roman Empire". |
| China | Zhōngguó (中国 (simpl.), 中國 (trad.)) ("Central Kingdom"); see Names of China |
| Croatia | Hrvatska |
| Czech Republic | Česká republika |
| Ancient Egypt | km·t ("The Black Land") |
| Modern Egypt | Miṣr (مصر) in Arabic, Maṣr in Egyptian dialect; means "a country" or "a state" |
| Estonia | Eesti in Estonian |
| Finland | Suomi in Finnish |
| Georgia | Sakartvelo (საქართველო); see Georgia (country): Origin of the name |
| Germany | Deutschland; see Names for Germany |
| Greece | Elás (Ελλάς) or Eládha (Ελλάδα) |
| Greenland | Kalaallit Nunaat in Greenlandic ("Land of the Greenlanders") |
| Hungary | Magyarország ("Magyar Land") |
| Inca Empire | Tawantinsuyu ("Four Corners") |
| India | Bhārat (भारत) in Hindi, but India is officially recognized too; see Origin of India's name; also Hindustan [Indian endonym] |
| Israel | Yiśrā'el (ישראל) |
| Italy | Italia |
| Japan | Nippon / Nihon (日本, E. "Sunspring, L. "Solorigo"; see Names of Japan) |
| Jordan | al-Urdunn (الأردنّ) |
| Korea | Chosŏn (Joseon) (조선 / 朝鮮) in North Korea and Hanguk (한국 / 韓國) in South Korea, but Goryeo (고려 / 高麗), the source of Korea, is used as neutral name for Korea; see Names of Korea |
| Lithuania | Lietuva in Lithuanian |
| Maldives | Dhivehi raajj'e ("The Islands of Dhivehi People" in Dhivehi language; see History of the Maldives) |
| Montenegro | Crna Gora / Црна Гора ("black mountain" in Serbian; see History of Montenegro: Etymology) |
| Morocco | al-Maghrib (المغرب)("The West" in Arabic; see also Maghrib and Maghreb) |
| Namibia | Namibië in Afrikaans |
| Norway | Norge in Bokmål Norwegian and Noreg in Nynorsk Norwegian |
| Persia | Īrān (in Persian, ايران) (The Land of Aryans) |
| Poland | Polska |
| Philippines | Pilipinas (in Tagalog) ([King] "Philip's" [Islands]) |
| Romania | România |
| Serbia | Србија/Srbija |
| Slovakia | Slovensko |
| Slovenia | Slovenija |
| South Africa | Suid-Afrika in Afrikaans |
| Spain | España in Spanish and Galician; Espanya in Catalan and Valencian; Espainia in Basque; Espanha in Aranese |
| Sumer | Kengi (Ki·en·gi: "Land [of the] lord-cultu[r]al/couthly"), Kengir (Ki·en·gir(>kiri): "Land [of the] lord-kithly(>nosely)"); ennen: lords[1] |
| Sweden | Sverige |
| Switzerland | Schweiz German, Suisse French, Svizzera Italian, and Svizra Romansh, represent the endonym in the four official languages of Switzerland; Helvetia, the Latin name, used in some cases (on coins, for instance) to avoid favouring one of the four languages. |
| Syria | Suria (سوريا) |
| Thailand | ประเทศไทย (Prathet Thai) |
| Tibet | བོད་ (Böd) |
| Turkey | Türkiye |
List of geographical region exonyms
| Exonym | Endonym |
|---|---|
| Amoy | 厦门: Ē-mn̂g (Amoy vernacular POJ), Xiàmén (Mandarin pinyin) |
| Andalusia | Andalucía (from Arabic al-Andalus, derived from Latin vandalus after the Germanic Vandals who settled in Hispania Baetica with the collapse of Roman rule. The Arabic term was given by the Arabs to their Spanish possessions after Islamic conquest—not really an exonym, just the old Spanish pronunciation, in fact still pronounced that way by many Andalusians) |
| Bangkok | Krung Thep (กรุงเทพ) |
| Basque Country | Euskadi (Basque), País Vasco (Spanish), Vascongadas (Spanish, before the 1970s, not in use today; also as adjective: "Provincias Vascongadas";) |
| Bavaria | Bayern |
| Bohemia (derived from Boiohaemum, Germanic for "the home of the Boii," a Celtic people) | Čechy |
| Canton | 廣州 = “expansive prefecture”: Gwong2 Jau1 (Cantonese Yale), Guǎngzhōu (Mandarin pinyin) |
| Castile | Castilla: same word with different pronunciation, English uses French name—not an exonym |
| Catalonia | Catalunya (Catalan), Cataluña (Spanish): not really an exonym, just the formal "Latinized" version, created by Catalans themselves when writing in Latin |
| Judæa | Yehūdāh (יהודה) |
| Lusatia | Lausitz (German) / Łužica (Upper Sorbian) / Łužyca (Lower Sorbian) / Łużyce (Polish) / Lužice (Czech) |
| Macau / Macao | 澳門: Ou3 Mun4 (Cantonese Jyutping), Àomén (Mandarin pinyin); Maa3 Gaau1 (Cantonese Jyutping) is commonly used. |
| Moldavia | Moldova |
| Moravia | Morava |
| Navarre | Nafarroa (Basque), Navarra (Spanish); Basque Nafarroa → Spanish Navarra → French Navarre → English Navarre—just adapted pronunciation, not different roots |
| Samogitia | Žemaitija in Lithuanian, Žemaitėjė in Samogitian |
| Silesia | Ślonsk (Silesian) / Śląsk (Polish) / Slezsko (Czech) / Schlesien (German) |
| Transylvania | Ardeal/Transilvania (Romanian) / Siebenbürgen (German) / Erdély (Hungarian) / Siedmiogród (Polish) |
| Wallachia | Ţara Românească / Muntenia / Valahia (Romanian) |
References
 |
- ^ a b c Sumerian Lexicon v.3. John A. Halloran. sumerian.org. (2006, 2007)
- ^ HittLang.pdf. Oriental Institute at University of Chicago. 352pp. (1998, 2007)
See also
- Romanian exonyms
- German exonyms
- Icelandic exonyms
- German names for Central European towns
- List of English exonyms for German toponyms
- -onym
- List of adjectival forms of place names
- Names of European cities in different languages
- List of European exonyms
- Names of Asian cities in different languages
- List of cities in the Americas with alternative names
- List of countries and capitals in native languages
- List of alternative country names
- List of country names in various languages
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- List of European regions with alternative names
- List of European rivers with alternative names
- List of traditional Greek place names
- Place names in Irish
- Shibboleth