On topic: I object to Italians calling England "inghilterra", Wales Galles and King Charles III as Re Carlo what's wrong with calling them by their proper names?! While we're at it, English should stop anglicising any foreign loanword or geographical place in the world, it's an affront (I am joking).

@Barmar I honestly think this whole thing is absolute nonsense. It's like the stupidity of Greece insisting that it should be called "Hellas", despite nobody outside Greece knowing what this is or how to pronounce it. I just don't get the pretentiousness. I mean, why do these people think they can dictate how native speakers of other languages should pronounce words in their own language?

The Greek thing is particularly annoying since it stems from a (completely mistaken) belief that the word "Greek" comes from "grekos" which means slave. Of course, the word means nothing of the sort, and although there are various theories for its origin, this "slave" thing seems to be a fabrication of nationalist Greeks.

Oh, I am Greek, hence my personal annoyance at this.

So let's call Turkey Turkey and Greece Greece and convince our local nationalists to accept that our countries might have a different name in different languages.

@BillJ That isn't its "proper" name. That's just its name in Turkish.

(I am so bloody tired of needing to explain to hapless border control agents that "Hellenic Republic" is indeed a part of the EU and is just the silly name the Greek state decided to foist on us)

@terdon Amen.

I really have no patience for this sort of thing. And I kinda love the fact that I can whine about it openly as a native speaker of both English and Greek! :)

Cody dye voy ree.

Our language, our letters.

@terdon Imagine if Greece told us we all have to write their country not merely Hellas, but indeed using the Greek alphabet not the Latin one, or the Cyrillic one, or in Chinese characters etc.

It's all pretentious and ridiculous.

Don't give us ideas, dammit!

At least we no longer have Czechoslovakia to argue about anymore.