On 11/14/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of people on both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted specific searches to prove it.
Yep. The world will not be a worse place, nor Wikipedia a worse encyclopedia, if it happens to have the article on Zurich at Zürich and the article on Ivory Coast at Cote d'Ivoire. While such choices seem utterly bizarre they are certainly not matters of great moment.
I do sometimes wonder where the process of abandonment of English proper names of places will lead us, but no doubt in time we would all become accustomed to referring to Cymru, Alba, Euskal Herria, Deutschland, España, Confoederatio Helvetica, Österreich, and all the rest--and some of us may even understand which country we're talking about.