I mean it’s mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
I don’t really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you’re not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with “language of the country” - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don’t think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí, and Britain as Prydain, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.
Wait till you find out that Germans have different words for all the other things we have words for, too!
Seriously though, the names of countries are just words. There’s no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.
I’ve always wanted to make a map that used the native names for countries instead of their English/American names.
https://endonymmap.com/ ? :)
Looks like they specifically chose the official English names for countries even when the indigenous name is also official.
They explain the methodology - where there is more than one official name, the name in the language with the most speakers in that country is used.
That’s certainly a decision.
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
I mean it’s mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
But it’s also kind of a pointless map as it’s not useful to an English speaker but it doesn’t commit to teaching you indigenous place names either.
I don’t really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you’re not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with “language of the country” - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don’t think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí, and Britain as Prydain, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.