Kolkata, just as Bombay is now Mumbai (since 1995), and similarly, how Peking is now Beijing. In that light the name change for Türkiye is not really novel or unreasonable. A growing number of countries are of the opinion that they should have some say on the exonyms used in English, especially when that language is used as the lingua franca at bodies like the UN.
It just makes sense in the airplane and internet age to revisit these names.
I knew the names "Pekin" and "Pondicherry" were (bad) attempts at Romanizing the local pronunciation. Since this was done in the 1600's, there was no way to have a local native speaker record himself saying the correct name and replay it back for Europeans ears.
"Peking" approximates how it may have been pronounced at one point, but the pronunciation has changed, making that approximation even worse than it started with.
For the record, not all languages use "Beijing" either: pekín is common in Spanish.
Speakers of non tonal languages are not about to learn the tone system for a truly authentic pronunciation of Beijing. And if they did, should they also learn the Cantonese place names and tone system where it is common, in addition to the Mandarin ones?
And the Chinese, for that matter, have a rather...interesting approach to spelling and pronouncing foreign place names.
Different languages have different sounds. There are some English place names that are hard for someone from Japan to pronounce and vice versa.
Layer in multi lingual countries and regions, regional accents, different writing systems, . multiple local place names, and political concerns and the problem becomes even harder.
Until we all speak the One True Language, we will forever have those impedence mismatches, and harmonizing place names will be doomed to fail.
> "Peking" approximates how it may have been pronounced at one point, but the pronunciation has changed, making that approximation even worse than it started with.
You're saying it's written the way it was pronounced centuries ago but isn't anymore? Well, then that makes "Peking" the perfect spelling for the English language! ;)
Kolkata, just as Bombay is now Mumbai (since 1995), and similarly, how Peking is now Beijing. In that light the name change for Türkiye is not really novel or unreasonable. A growing number of countries are of the opinion that they should have some say on the exonyms used in English, especially when that language is used as the lingua franca at bodies like the UN.