this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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The exonym doesnt have to be identical to the endonym. Some countries try to align the terms, most countries dont care.
I think the main reason Greece hasnt tried to change its exonym is because Hellas is similar to hell. Still, Norway calls Greece Hellas, mostly in order to show how different they are from Sweden. (H)Ellas is so much better sounding, more airy and refined to my Greek ears. Greece sounds too rough and barbaric.
You could drop the H(it is just there for accent/spirit), using just Ellas and/or use the longer Ellada variant but ultimately Greece doesnt care.
Turkey are just assholes so they decided to use a name that most people cant type. They could have chosen Turkia(which is basically the same thing), kinda like the Czech Republic chose to be Czechia but Turkey is not a normal country.
Nobody could possibly argue with a straight face that Cstzeczchia is a reasonable International English name for a country.
To me, "Hellenic Republic" and "Helliniki Dimokratia" sound pretty great, and don't really sound like "hell". But, I can see it for Hellas / Hellada.
On the other hand, an exonym that's a variant of one used for the country thousands of years ago is also really cool. Even though there are a lot of places that have been inhabited for thousands of years, not many of them can point to a continuity like that, going by the same name for that long.
I also agree, Turkia would have been a decent compromise name. But, I'm just going to keep using Turkey.