Biggest French Empire Countries

To quote Wikipedia, "Despite the Ivorian government's request, the English translation "Ivory Coast" (often "the Ivory Coast") is still frequently used in English, by various media outlets and publications." Some colonialist Wikipedia editors may have come together to enforce an English translation of the country's name on the site, but that should not overrule the Ivorians' voices and self-identification. After all, this is the same principle at work when Myanmar is displayed as the correct answer, although Burma is accepted.

Yeah, because French is not totally not a colonialist language.

"various media outlets and publications" pronounce Iran as Eye-ran and that doesn't make it right. "various media outlets and publications" declared the Earth to be a disk and that didn't make it true. The list goes on.

I wonder why the double standard exists in the first place. We're keen to say Ivory Coast right now, but nobody would use Saint Thomas and Principe, Saint Marin, Trinity and Tobago, Lion Range or Black Mountain (the last case being the funniest since everybody calls the country Montenegro except Slavic people, including Montenegrans themselves who translate the Italian name... must have something to do with Venice).

I'm also not a big fan of using Côte d'Ivoire in English, but, to be fair, we also use Costa Rica and not the Rich Coast, and other countries' names, as others have pointed out, so...

Myanmar has requested to be called Myanmar, Côte d'Ivoire has requested to be called Côte d'Ivoire. If Germany requests to be called Deutschland, or if China requests to go by 中国 then by all means we would change to that, but they haven't and so we don't.

There is a language issue going on here, not just a respect issue.

It's nice to want to respect the wishes of the Ivorian government and use their chosen name. But language isn't a thing that's decreed from on high by an authority. Language is what the man in the street says. Dictionaries, for instance, must reflect the common usage of words - it's street usage that determines what is "right" in language, not governments.

In this case, if I said "Cote d'Ivoire" to the people I know, or even typed it in a message, I would look like a pompous buffoon. The standard accepted name for the country in everyday usage is the Ivory Coast.

Can you imagine if France decreed that Paris was to be pronounced "Paree" by foreigners, or Austria tried to force us to say and write "Wien" instead of Vienna? Anybody who said it would sound ludicrous and so people would reject it.

Germans can call their country Deutschland, Alemania, Platzfüridioten, or the Sausage Republic... and that probably won't ever change the fact that the name for the country, in English, is and will remain Germany. If they officially changed the name to something else... then... maybe... the English name would also be changed to reflect that. However, that's not what happened in the case of the Ivory Coast. The name of the country did not change. It's just that some people suddenly started insisting that everyone else start speaking French. To Germans, the short name of their country *is* Deutschland. But that's because they speak German.

I don't really see how the King of eSwatini insisting on that name change is any different than Ivory Coast and Cote D'Ivoire. To some extent European explorers and academics over the centuries got really lazy and somewhat racist to just dismiss the proper way to pronounce countries and cities. Hmm... what do we call this island country attached to Indonesia? Well the Spanish explorer thought they looked like African people from Guinea. And they have frizzy hair, or "papua" as it is said in the local language. Papua New Guinea, sure, why not. Frizzy-haired Guineans. As far as I'm concerned, let countries be called what the locals call themselves. If PNG wants to become Melanesia, yeah. If they prefer Papua Nueva Guinea, it's really not that hard to just remember Nueva instead of New. If PNG wanted to embed Spanish roots into their name, why not? It'll just become the norm in like 5 years and no one will think anything of it!

So let's start calling Japan "Nihon" like they call it there.

Same on France, and missed CAR as well.

No I meant Cambodia.

Kampuchea is another name of Cambodia.