[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language reasons.

[Chris Lüer]

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Of course Ivory Coast is the real name of the country, just as Royaume
>Uni is the real French name of the UK, and it would be a very
>fatheaded French speaker indeed who insisted on parking the article on
>the UK under United Kingdom where hardly anybody would look for it.

The issue with Ivory Coast/ Côte d'Ivoire is not 
English versus French, but Colonialism versus 
Independence. Most African countries that used to 
have European names changed to local names by the 
time they got independent, e.g. Gold Coast to 
Ghana, Southwest Africa to Namibia, British West 
Africa to Nigeria. IC/CI didn't. So when they 
decided to fix that problem recently, they did 
not to do what neighboring Upper Volta did (they 
renamed themselves to Burkina and nobody knew 
where the place was anymore), but instead they 
said the country name shouldn't be translated 
anymore, as if it was a local name.

The question is whether a country should have the 
right to decide on its own name, and if we should 
respect that decision. Deutschland doesn't mind 
being called Germany in English, neither does 
Nihon mind being called Japan in English, but 
CI/IC and Myanmar/Burma do mind their traditional English names.

         Chl