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