An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, Location, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or speech community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language.
An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is a foreign established, non-native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place,
For instance, is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and in English language and Italian language, respectively, and in Spanish language and French language, respectively, in Polish language, and and in Finnish language and Estonian, respectively.
Naming and etymology
The terms
autonym,
endonym,
exonym and
xenonym are formed by adding specific
to the Greek root word ὄνομα () , from Proto-Indo-European .
The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek:
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endonym: ἔνδον () ;
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exonym: ἔξω () ;
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autonym: αὐτός () ; and
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xenonym: ξένος () .
The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms.
Marcel Aurousseau, an Australian geographer, first[ ( TOC)] used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957).
Typology
and can be divided in three main categories:
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endonyms and exonyms of place names (toponymy),
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endonyms and exonyms of human names (anthroponymy), including names of (), localised populations (), and individuals (),
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endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms).
[Edelman, Loulou. 2009. "What's in a Name? Classification of proper names by language". Pp. 141–53 in Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery, edited by E. Shohamy and D. Gorter. London: Routledge. Goh, CL.:
]
"The names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors as well as place names are commonly translated. Foreign names for geographic proper names are called exonyms. Fourment-Berni Canani (1994) discusses the (im)possibility of translating proper names. He gives examples of the place names Venice and London. The Italian city italic=no has been renamed Venice in English and italic=no in French. A city in the American state California is also called Venice, but this name is not changed into italic=no in Italian and italic=no in French. Similarly, the English city London has been renamed italic=no in French and italic=no in Italian. However, the Canadian city called London is not translated into French and Italian in this way. Thus, as Fourment-Berni Canani concludes, a place name can be translated if the place, as a unique referent, has already been renamed in the target language."
Endonyms and exonyms of toponyms
As it pertains to geographical features, the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines:
[.]
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Endonym: "Name of a geographical feature in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the feature is located."
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Exonym: "Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well-established language of that area where the geographical feature is located."
For example, India, China, Egypt, and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat (), Zhōngguó (中国), Masr (), and Deutschland, respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example for bodies of water.
Endonyms and exonyms of glossonyms
In the case of endonyms and exonyms of
linguonym (glossonyms),
Chinese language, German language, and
Dutch language, for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén (中文), Deutsch, and
Nederlands, respectively.
Exonyms in relation to endonyms
By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories:
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those that are cognate words, diverged only in pronunciation or orthography;
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those that are fully or partially translated (a calque) from the native language;
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those derived from different roots, as in the case of Germany for Deutschland.
Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of the letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori, having only one liquid consonant, is an example of this.
Cognate exonyms
London (originally ), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms:
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Londres in Basque language, Catalan language, Filipino, French language, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish language;
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Λονδίνο () in Greek language;
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Londen in Dutch language and Afrikaans;
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Londra in Italian language, Maltese language, Romanian, Romansh language, Sardinian and Turkish language;
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Londër in Albanian;
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Londýn in Czech language and Slovak language;
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Londyn in Polish language;
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Rānana in Māori;
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Lundúnir in Icelandic;
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Londain in Irish language;
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Lunnainn in Scottish Gaelic;
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Llundain in Welsh language;
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Lontoo in Finnish language;
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Luân Đôn in Vietnamese;
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لندن () in Persian language, and Urdu;
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伦敦 in Mandarin Chinese.
Translated exonyms
An example of a translated exonym is the name for the
Netherlands (Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in
German language (Niederlande),
French language (Pays-Bas),
Italian language (Paesi Bassi),
Spanish language (Países Bajos),
Irish language (An Ísiltír), Portuguese (Países Baixos), Romanian (Țările de Jos) and
Czech language (Nizozemsko), all of which mean "Low Countries". However, the endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish and Czech are plural.
Native and borrowed exonyms
Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the
Slovene language exonyms Dunaj (
Vienna) and Benetke (
Venice) are native, but the
Avar language name of Paris, Париж (
Parizh) is borrowed from
Russian language Париж (
Parizh), which comes from Polish Paryż, which comes from Italian Parigi.
A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example:
Typical development of exonyms
Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of the endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature.
According to James Matisoff, who introduced the term autonym into linguistics, exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung language name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo language name for Chin peoples; both the Jingpo and Burmese language use the Chinese word yeren (labels=no) as the name for Lisu people.
As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example:
In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g., German language: Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian language: Lubiana and Zagabria. Madrid, Berlin, Oslo, and Amsterdam, with identical names in most major European languages, are exceptions.
Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst the spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ.
For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades. Livorno, for instance, was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British navy; not far away, Rapallo, a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym.
In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic), the Russians used the village name of Chechen people, medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatars as emblematic for the whole confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus, a word for Hell, to produce Tatars), and the Hungarian people invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians.
The Germanic peoples invaders of the Roman Empire applied the word "Walha" to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence:
Usage
In avoiding exonyms
During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms sometimes became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in a
pejorative way. For example,
Romani people often prefer that term (Romani) over exonyms such as
Gypsy (from the name of
Egypt) or the French term bohemianism]], bohème (from the name of
Bohemia).
People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk, Auschwitz/Oświęcim and Karlsbad/
Karlovy Vary) or Russian names for non-Russian locations that regained their local name (e.g. Kiev/
Kyiv).
In recent years, have sought to reduce the use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora.[Sandro Toniolo, I perché e i nomi della geografia, Istituto Geografico Militare, Florence 2005, p. 88–89, n. 170-171.] According to the United Nations Statistics Division:
Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage.
In preference of exonyms
In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in
multilingualism cities such as
Brussels, which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers, a neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names (
Dutch language/
Flemish dialects: Brussel;
French language: Bruxelles).
Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category. The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over the years, the endonym may have undergone phonetics changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris, where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne, where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or the Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original.
In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjective phrase usage in another language like English, which has the propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language.
Official preferences
Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country:
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In 1782, Rama I of Siam moved the government seat from Thon Buri Province to Phra Nakhon Province. In 1972 the Thai Government merged Thon Buri and Phra Nakhon, forming the new capital, Krungthep Mahanakhon. However, outside of Thailand, the capital retained the old name and is still called Bangkok.
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In 1935, Reza Shah requested that foreign nations use the name Iran rather than Persia in official correspondence.
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In 1939, the government of Siam changed the name to Thailand, although the former name's adjective in English ( Siamese) was retained as the name for the fish, cat and conjoined twins.
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In 1972, the government of Ceylon (the word is the anglicized form of Portuguese Ceilão) changed the name to Sri Lanka, although the name Ceylon was retained as the name for Ceylon tea. (See Names of Sri Lanka.)
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In 1985, the government of Côte d'Ivoire requested that the country's French name be used in all languages instead of exonyms such as Ivory Coast,
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In 1989, the government of Burma requested that the English name of the country be Myanmar,
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The Government of India officially changed the English name of Bombay to Mumbai in November 1995,
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The Ukraine government maintains that the capital of Ukraine should be spelled Kyiv in English
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The government argues that the endonym Belarus should be used in all languages.
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The government of Georgia has been working to have the country renamed from the Russian-derived exonym of Gruzia in foreign languages to Georgia. Most countries have adopted this change, except for Lithuania, which adopted Sakartvelas (a Lithuanianised version of the country's endonym). As a response, Georgia changed the name of Lithuania in Georgian from the Russian-derived Lit’va (ლიტვა) to the endonym Liet’uva (ლიეტუვა). Ukrainian politicians have also suggested that Ukraine change the Ukrainian name of Georgia from Hruzia (Грузія) to Sakartvelo (Сакартвело).
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In 2006, the national government officially changed the Chinese name of its capital, Seoul, from the exonym 漢城/汉城 (Hànchéng) derived from the Joseon era Hanja name () to Shǒu'ěr (首爾/首尔). This use has now been made official within China.
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In December 2021, a circular was issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey ordering the use of Türkiye (also rendered Turkiye in English) instead of exonyms in official communications, no matter the language.
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Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul) is still called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολη) in Greek, although the name was changed between 1923 and 1930 in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past. (The name Istanbul itself may derive from Constantinople.
["The Names of Kōnstantinoúpolis". Dünden bugüne İstanbul ansiklopedisi. 5. Ciltli. 1994.] Prior to Constantinople, the city was known in Greek as Byzantium]] (, ), named after its mythical founder, Byzas.)
Hanyu Pinyin
Following the 1979 declaration of
Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese, many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms,
especially city and most provincial names in
mainland China, for example:
Beijing (labels=no),
Qingdao (labels=no), and the province of
Guangdong (labels=no). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing;
Peking duck,
Peking opera, etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local
Chinese variety instead of
Mandarin Chinese, in the case of
Xiamen, where the name Amoy is closer to the
Hokkien pronunciation.
In the case of Beijing, the adoption of the endonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignism pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as .
In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei, most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District is now spelled Xinyi. However, districts like Tamsui District and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization, including Taipei, Taichung, Taitung City, Keelung, and Kaohsiung.
During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of the Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of "dialects". For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew people-Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (林義順, : lim5 ngi6 sung6, : Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation Aū-káng is most commonly used.[Yeh, Yun-Tsui. (2013) " Erased Place Names" and Nation-building: A Case Study of Singaporean Toponyms". Sociology.]
Exonyms as pejoratives
Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'."
In Basque language, the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French).
Many millennia earlier, the Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them "", which eventually gave rise to the exonym "Berber people".
Slavic people
Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the
Slavic languages term for the Germans, , possibly deriving from plural of ("mute"); standard etymology
has it that the
peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak the "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi);
Russian language немцы (nemtsy),
Slovene language Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian, Romanian, and
Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to
Austria).
One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term "Slav" suggests that it comes from the Slavic root (hence "Slovakia" and "Slovenia" for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context, the Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones".
Native Americans
The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name "
Apache" most likely derives from a
Zuni language word meaning "enemy". The name "
Sioux", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux, most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, *-a·towe· ('foreign-speaking).
The name "
Comanche" comes from the
Ute language word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger".
The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a
Navajo language word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary
Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym in favor of "Ancestral Puebloan."
Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal.
Confusion with renaming
Following independence from the UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name
Madras, now
Chennai, may be a special case. When the city was first
British India, in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into the new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the
South India.
Lists of exonyms
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Latin exonyms
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List of English exonyms
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English exonyms for German toponyms
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English-translated personal names
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List of German exonyms
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German names for Central European towns
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German exonyms for places in Belgium
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German exonyms for places in Croatia
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German exonyms for places in Denmark
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German exonyms for places in Estonia
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German exonyms for places in Hungary
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German exonyms for places in Latvia
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German exonyms for places in Slovakia
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German exonyms for places in Switzerland
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List of European exonyms
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Names of European cities in different languages
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Finnish exonyms
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Italian exonyms
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Portuguese exonyms
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Icelandic exonyms
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Slavic toponyms for Greek places
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Welsh names for other places in Britain and Ireland
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African/Asian/Middle-Eastern/Eurasian exonyms
See also
Other lists
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List of countries and dependencies and their capitals in native languages
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List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names
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List of language names
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List of alternative country names
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List of country names in various languages
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List of Latin place names in Europe
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List of European regions with alternative names
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List of European rivers with alternative names
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List of traditional Greek place names
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List of Coptic placenames
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Place names in Irish
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Names of places in Finland in Finnish and in Swedish
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List of renamed Indian cities and states
Citations
General and cited sources
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Jordan, Peter, Hubert Bergmann, Caroline Burgess, and Catherine Cheetham, eds. 2010 & 2011. "Trends in Exonym Use." Proceedings of the 10th UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms Meeting. Tainach (28–30 April 2010). Hamburg (2011). Name & Place 1.
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Jordan, Peter, Milan Orožen Adamič, and Paul Woodman, eds. 2007. "Exonyms and the International Standardisation of Geographical Names." Approaches towards the Resolution of an Apparent Contradiction. Wien and Berlin. Wiener Osteuropastudien 24.
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External links
