On 11/14/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of
people on
both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right
about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted
specific searches to prove it.
Yep. The world will not be a worse place, nor Wikipedia a worse
encyclopedia, if it happens to have the article on Zurich at Zürich
and the article on Ivory Coast at Cote d'Ivoire. While such choices
seem utterly bizarre they are certainly not matters of great moment.
I do sometimes wonder where the process of abandonment of English
proper names of places will lead us, but no doubt in time we would all
become accustomed to referring to Cymru, Alba, Euskal Herria,
Deutschland, España, Confoederatio Helvetica, Österreich, and all the
rest--and some of us may even understand which country we're talking
about.
I don't hear much complaining about the change away from the established
English names of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. When the news of last
year's tsunami broke I had to pause to determine what this major
affected city of Chennai was.
Ec