I have faced this issue many times over the years. Thanks to Shabab for explaining this methodically. 

Here are my 2 cents:

In Wikipedia, the goal is to report what the status quo *is*, not what the status quo *should be*. Whether we like it or not, the name of our language in English is "Bengali". One might argue that it should be "Bangla", which I agree with, but the reality and the international naming conventions/standards all use "Bengali" as the name of the language.

As a similar example, take Japanese language. No one in Japan would call their language "Japanese" (it's called "Nihongo" in Japan). But in English language, it is called "Japanese", hence the English language wikipedia has an article on "Japanese language", but not on "Nihongo language". The same goes for the German language. 

Note that, we are not talking about Bangla Wikipedia in Bangla ... in that one, we clearly use Bangla as the name. But as long as the standards say "Bengali" is the name of the language in English language, we should use Bengali while writing in the English wikipedia. Hope this makes sense.

Regards,


Ragib

--
Ragib Hasan, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor & Director, UAB SECRETLab
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, AL 35294

http://secret.cis.uab.edu
http://www.ragibhasan.com


On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Nurunnaby Chowdhury <nh@nhasive.com> wrote:
+1 Shabab Bhai..
I think now everyone easy to understand the matter.


On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Shabab Mustafa <shabab.mustafa@gmail.com> wrote:
I am changing the subject title to keep this discussion under correct heading.

This very thing has bugged me for a long time and I gave it some more intense thoughts and a little research. Here I am not trying to preach about what is 'Right' and what is 'Wrong', rather I am just presenting facts I have discovered and what are my thought on this matter for further discussion. I will try to keep it as short as possible.

According to the Eighth Amendment of the constitution of Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, Section 3 reads, "The state language of the Republic is Bangla"[1]. So, it's clear that Bangladesh has officially declared the language should be spelled as 'Bangla'. And we are bound to use 'Bangla' as every official documents and so on.

Bangla is not only spoken in Bangladesh. Bangla is also spoken in least 3 major regions; West Bengal, Tripura, Assam (Barak valley), Andaman and Nicobar Islands. [2] There is a lot of other people around the world also speaks Bangla as well.

When we are talking about Bangla in Bangladesh, it's fairly simple. But it have an international context, situation is different.

ISO (International Organization of Standardization)[3] is the body responsible for setting international standards. People follow ISO standards on International matters regardless of their domestic practice (i.e. some countries use 'Mile' as domestic unit of length, but also use 'Kilometer' when international matters involved) and this is the commonly accepted manner.

ISO has set up a list of language and their universal codes for it, which are widely accepted by the UN countries. On 'ISO 639-1' standards[4] a two-letter code was adopted and 'ISO 639-2' [5] adopted a three-letter code. For 'Bengali' which are 'bn' and 'ben' respectively. [6]

On this coding system, some language have had initials of their original form/spelling of their language. Like, Persian. 'Persian' is the English name of 'Farsi'. Persian has language codes like 'fa' and 'far'. On 'ISO 639-2/T' it adopted the three letters from the English name of the Language, 'per'. Same thing happened to German and French ('German', 'Deutsch', 'de', 'deu', 'ger' and 'French', 'français', 'fr', 'fra','fre'). [6]

These ISO codes are also widely used on field of IT. Systems recognize languages with their English names than their native names. This is mainly because of that a non 'German' speaker doesn't wonder about what 'Deutsch' is. This rule was applied universally for all the languages. And under this rule, 'Bangla' became 'Bengali', just like 'Français' became 'French'.

So, the thing is, when we are using 'Bangla' for our domestic use, 'Bangla' is the correct (bound by the constitution) spelling for 'Bangla'. But when we are talking international matters, it should be 'Bengali' for more practical and logical reasons.

[3]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization
[4]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1
[5]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-2
[6]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
---
Shabab Mustafa


On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Aditya <aditya@asiaticjwt.com> wrote:
i also support that view. "bangla", not "bengali".

--------------------------------------------------
From: <rahman.khan.john@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:03 PM
To: "Discussion list for Bangladeshi Wikimedians" <wikimedia-bd@lists.wikimedia.org>

Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-BD] A good news about Bengali Wikipedia

Can we please mention 'bangla'  instead of 'bengali' ?
-----Original Message-----
From: Safwan Rahman
Sent:  23/01/2014, 13:04
To: Discussion list for Bangladeshi Wikimedians
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-BD] A good news about Bengali Wikipedia


How they have collected the data and made the statistics?

On 1/23/14, Nurunnaby Chowdhury <nh@nhasive.com> wrote:
Belayet Bhai,
Times of India published this news. Check this link:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-20/internet/46374197_1_google-page-views-page-views


2014/1/22 Belayet Hossain <bellayet@gmail.com>

Hasive,
Thank you for your news at prothom alo. Please give us the original
reference of that statistics or facts.


Belayet


2014/1/22 Nurunnaby Chowdhury <nh@nhasive.com>

 প্রিয় সবাই,
একটা ভালো খবর..
২০১২ সালের ডিসেম্বর থেকে ২০১৩ সালের ডিসেম্বর পর্যন্ত পাওয়া তথ্য অনুযায়ী
এক বছরে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ার ব্যবহার বেড়েছে ৪৬ শতাংশ।  বাংলার পাশাপাশি
উইকিপিডিয়ার হিন্দি সংস্করণের ব্যবহার ৩৪ শতাংশ, মালায়ালাম সংস্করণ ৩৬
শতাংশ,
মারাঠি সংস্করণ ৪ শতাংশ এবং তেলেগু ১ শতাংশ বেড়েছে। এ নিয়ে আজ প্রথম আলোতে
প্রকাশিত সংবাদ:

*বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ার ব্যবহার
বেড়েছে*<http://www.prothom-alo.com/technology/article/128638>

--
*Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive*
Administrator | Bangla
Wikipedia<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:nhasive>
Social Media Interaction Expert &
Assignment Reporter | The Daily Prothom-Alo <http://www.prothom-alo.com>
Bangladesh Ambassador | Open Knowledge Foundation Network
<http://www.okfn.org>
Treasurer | Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN)
<http://www.bdosn.org>
fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive <http://www.twitter.com/nhasive> | Skype:
nhasive | www.nhasive.com

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--
Belayet Hossain
https://www.facebook.com/bellayet <http://www.facebook.com/bellayet>
https://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:bellayet<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:bellayet>
https://reps.mozilla.org
/u/bellayet<https://reps.mozilla.org/u/bellayet/>
http://twitter.com/bellayet
http://mozillianbd.wordpress.com
http://bellayet.wordpress.com (Bangla)
Knowledge is universal
              ...so share it.

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--
*Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive*
Administrator | Bangla Wikipedia
<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:nhasive>
Social Media Interaction Expert &
Assignment Reporter | The Daily Prothom-Alo <http://www.prothom-alo.com>
Bangladesh Ambassador | Open Knowledge Foundation Network
<http://www.okfn.org>
Treasurer | Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) <http://www.bdosn.org>
fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive <http://www.twitter.com/nhasive> | Skype: nhasive
| www.nhasive.com

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-BD mailing list
Wikimedia-BD@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd


_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-BD mailing list
Wikimedia-BD@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd


_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-BD mailing list
Wikimedia-BD@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd


_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-BD mailing list
Wikimedia-BD@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd




--
Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive
Administrator | Bangla Wikipedia

Social Media Interaction Expert &
Assignment Reporter | The Daily Prothom-Alo
Bangladesh Ambassador | Open Knowledge Foundation Network
Treasurer | Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN)
fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive | Skype: nhasive | www.nhasive.com

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-BD mailing list
Wikimedia-BD@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd