I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

They don't have any authority to manage other people's languages.

The lack of capitalization is an obvious error, though. Before clicking, I wondered if some accidental discovery in turkeys (as birds) resulted in better human hair growth.

> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

And that's fine. I mentioned Türkiye because at least one smart-ass would correct me otherwise. But "turkey" is a bird. For it to be a country it's at least gotta be "Turkey".

Fully agree.

> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

Whyever not? It's their stated preference. And it's hardly the same kind of change as "China" vs. "Zhōngguó" or "Germany" vs. "Deutschland". It's just a slightly different spelling and pronunciation of the same word. You can change your ways.

Germany's official name is Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Germany's official name in English is "Federal Republic of Germany". (And in French the official name is "La République fédérale d'Allemagne").

Another country's official name in English is "Republic of Türkiye". Since 2022.

In both cases, that is what officials from the country expect the country to be called, when using the English language.

For instance here

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/germany

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/turkiye

And yet you write "Germany", not "germany".

Well, you don't know if they do, or if they were just capitalising the start of their sentence while not feeing that the word needs a capital letter in and of itself.

(But yeah, personally I would capitalised both counties regardless of spelling/which name used.)

Turkiye is the endonym, not the exonym.

Not anymore really, at least according to their preference. At a minimum, a capital T will prevent comedic errors like a head full of feathers.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147704945/the-state-departme...

I agree on the capital T. It's still Turkey to me.

Sure, but "turkey" is a bird, not a country. You at least have to write "Turkey" to be clear to English speakers. If you like, save Türkiye for your visits to the UN.

I agree on a capital T. Country names are proper nouns and should always be capitalised.

Hold on, I’m confused for real. If not for the country, is this just a cosmic linguistic coincidence? J/k but only sorta.

Any country should have the respect to have their names spelled out as they prefer, the PITA is the keyboards. I speak for myself, but when I type Turkey I mean the country with no subliminal diss.

Let's talk turkey, does it really matter?

Yes, casing matters. It carries meaning.

It's the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.

This headline makes it sound like the IT systems of a cosmetic surgeon have been attacked by poultry.

Exactly. "Earth" means the planet we live on and "earth" means soil. The disrespect of the meaning conveyed by not using the correct case is noxious and sloppy.

You guys are being too case sensitive.

Does anything matter? If there are things that matter, grammar is one of those things.

Yes? The country is named Türkiye, we should use that name?

The etymology here is interesting and has a looooong history. The country has officially been named Türkiye for over a century.

And Germany's official name is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland". I get to call it Germany though.

Germany's official English name is Germany[0].

[0] https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/view/745bbc2a-fc50-4b94-bb9...

Has Germany said they should be called Deutschland by English speakers?

Is it a right of any nation to assert what other nations call it? Can America ask China to stop calling them 美国 (Měiguó) and call them the USA?

The problem with the turkey rebranding is that it was a mere orthographic update, but it is using orthography that is very non standard(whatever that means for English), including using a diacritic rarely seen in English.

I could get behind it more if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini. But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

Yes? It's obviously the case that countries can ask this?

We can choose not to do it, I guess, but place names change all the time. Istanbul vs Constantinople. New York vs New Amsterdam. Myanmar vs Burma. Czechia vs Czech Republic. Swaziland vs Eswatini.

> But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

Big fan of Thanksgiving foods I see.

(Do you see the real problem? Lowercasing a proper noun that has another meaning when lowercased. Turkey/Türkiye is just the cherry on top)

Yes, compare Czech Republic-> Czechia. No problem typing that out, no problem updating my mental map of the world.

Frankly I dispute that Türkiye can be the English name given it contains a non-English letter.

I was gearing up to suggest that diaeresis very absolute valid English, but dug in a bit. It's not just a u with a diacritic. Ü is a separate letter in Turkish, with a more "ooh" or "ouh" like sound. TIL.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

It's governed through the United Nations[0].

[0] https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/country

If you need an example, look at the Peking->Beijing transition.

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin Turkish still uses the old term. Why should I change my language to suit them if they won't do it for others.

That attitude is, frankly, pretty misanthropic. "Why should I do anything for anyone who doesn't do it for me first" is how you get nowhere.

So here's your why: because they asked you to and you are better at it than they are. If you need smug superiority, you could use that too, I guess.

People change their names and nick names all the time. I don't go and check every value of theirs before I use their new name. It's really not that complicated.

I don't see why I should follow the demands of an authoritarian president who encourages ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus and represses ethnic minorities in his own country. Especially when they won't do it for others.

Oh, extremely fuck Erdogan. Despots don't deserve the time of day. If that's your reason to keep it Turkey, then fine. Probably still not turkey, though. We can check back after Erdogan is gone and see how you feel about Türkiye then.

But not germany.

This sort of language policing is pointless.

I mean it matters here. "turkey" and "Turkey" legitimately have different meanings.

So does 'mark' and 'Mark', that doesn't mean I correct everyone (or myself) every time they/I type my name without using a capital letter.

Ok but are there Wired articles about you?

Words come from the people who use them. The name for a place is in the context of the language and culture that is using the word to reference it.

I will call them Turkiye when they call Greece Hellas, Germany Deutschland and China Zhongguo in Turkish.

Have those countries made those requests?

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin Turkish doesn't seem to respect the wishes of the Chinese government with regard to Beijing.

You and I both know that Turkey would never do such a thing.

Regular Turkish people may not. The Turkish government, in official diplomatic communications, most certainly would if those countries requested it.

I don't think we are required to start calling it Turkey in the vernacular. Regular Turkish people don't have to change their names for countries in their language either. I only pointed out Turkey/Türkiye in my original post to head off smart-asses. Using proper casing for the name is much more important.

Yes! I originally read the headline as "a turkey" because of the lack of a capital T.

They can call themselves what they want, but it unreasonable of the Turks to expect English speakers to write their country's name with characters which are not part of our alphabet.

Yeah I'm not gonna type out the u with an umlaut (?) myself on an message board. If I were writing to the UN or to the Turkish embassy I'd copy-paste it. But lowercasing a proper noun is egregious.