I haven’t written about this in a while, but Mark Krikorian’s complaint about using local names for foreign places gives me an excuse to revisit it. Krikorian writes:

You can call your own country anything you please; it’s no skin off my nose. But when we have established English words for places, we should stick to them. To the objection that we should accede to such demands out of politeness I respond that it’s impolite to demand that others stop using long-established words in their own language.

I suppose I still don’t understand what the difficulty is in using the new names. Sometimes English speakers want to make a political point in refusing the use the new name, as if consenting to use it gives aid to the BJP or the Burmese junta. This is silly, and fortunately Krikorian isn’t making that argument.

At least Krikorian is arguing for using the standard English names because they are the established, traditional names for these places, but even here I don’t find the argument very compelling. When British Honduras became Belize, we didn’t keep calling it by the earlier name out of respect for tradition. When Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, no one batted an eye in accepting the change. No one feels a nostalgic need to refer to Thailand as Siam. Why is Myanmar any different?