We literally did centuries ago. No Arabic name is ever latinized because - aa it turns out - if you stop using Latin, you don’t need Latinization.
For existing names, I don’t see a problem with using the historic remnant. It was useful at the time because of Latin grammar and the Latin names are much more well established.
It happened with every name by the way. See Confucius, Nostradamus or Copernicus.
What localized name should you call Copernicus by the way?
The Latin Nicolaus Copernicus?
The Polish Mikołaj Kopernik?
The Middle Low German Niklas Koppernigk?
The Modern German Nikolaus Kopernikus?
Turns out being a scientist in a multilingual region leads to a bunch of different names.
No, I disagree - same with countries names. Would be good to not anglicize or Latinize anything anymore. It’s ok if people expand their boundaries and pronunciation skills.
Everyone else continues to call it Turkey, especially newspapers. It’s why the Wikipedia article continues to be called “Turkey”. Neither me nor you are a country or international organization.
Same with Ivory Coast and its official name “Côte d’Ivoire”.
But it’s so cringe when English speakers suddenly switch to a foreign accent to pronounce one word. And would you want to force speakers of other languages to do the same instead of using their own versions of English names?
Curious as to where you’re from? I can see it seeming false if you’re used to english speakers mangling everything non-english, but if you’re not it doesn’t seem cringe at all.
I even find it weird when people who do have that heritage do it. It just rings fake.
Theres a celebrity chef who is terrible for it. When 99% of the time on camera you have perfect American “non regional media diction” but pronounce “cilantro” or “Jalapeno” like someones abuela it comes across like someone putting on an act.
I think its jarring in that case because the english is so forced into that absolutely accent free state that doesnt exist outside of network television, that the switch up to a very spanish pronunciation of a single word then back into tv presenter is so abrupt. Its like skipping gears. Media voice, normal voice, normal spanish, exaggerated spanish. Skipping two gears is not going to be a smooth transition. Its not like a regular person having a regular conversation.
i was with you until turkey, that shit is just propaganda.
Countries are not people, we shouldn’t treat them as people. Individuals deserve to have their actual names used because individuals deserve respect, but nations are an arbitrary modern invention that makes the world worse.
How do you decide which is the “correct” native name for countries with multiple cultures and languages? Using all of them is exhausting and confusing, but only using one of them is oppressing the other ones.
Was more pointing to the fact that country/geographic names are often Anglicized because that’s how western maps would label them (incorrect translations or pronunciations).
There’s a pacific island nation changing their name to their original because for decades they were known as the colonizer name. Is that wrong or oppressive?
So I guess deciding what to be called would be up to that nation.
Dude. “We’ve always done it like that” is your argument? Can you not see how it would be beneficial to try and emphasise that a lot of contributions to science came from non-European scholars?
Nah, I’m arguing only to keep old and established names only. It makes in my opinion little sense to start referring to the one’s I mentioned as Kong Qiu, de Nostredame, or Koppernigk.
Feel free to use whatever name you like. Whether you choose to use the romanized or established latinized name is none of anyone’s business.
You’re saying this as if the process is latin specific. Just like how we can see Sheikh Zubayr written in the post in English, you could do the same in other languages, too.
It’s deliberate whitewashing of scientists that’s disgusting and your defending it here that’s appalling.
I never claimed it was specific to Latin? You can see it with the example of Copernicus that it was Latinized, Polonized (?) and Modern-Standard-Germanized.
Franz Liszt is called Liszt Ferenc in Hungarian. That’s because Ferenc is the Hungarian variant of Franz and Hungarian names are spelled backwards for some reason.
I could provide so many more options where people were given several names because they did not live in a monolingual region.
In Czech, women’s last names take on the -ová suffix. Even if they aren’t Czech, didn’t speak Czech or never set a foot into Czechia. For example: Hillary Clintonová
I frankly don’t care enough about what languages do to names. If the intent is to wipe out other cultures then it’s obviously bad. Like colonizing Brits did with native landmarks (e.g. Uluru -> Ayer’s Rock). If the intent is to adjust the name to a cultures grammar, pronunciation or similar, I couldn’t care less.
Except the intent is very much likely to wipe out other cultures here and not just to match grammar or pronunciation.
Honestly, this is a racist stereotype. A European person does something involving other cultures, therefore it must be an act of extermination. You’re stereotyping everyone of European decent as a plundering imperialist.
Why assume malice when there are perfectly reasonable explanations? Specifically, the perfectly reasonable explanation of “to make the words pronounceable in the local tongue.” Different languages have different structures and phonemes. Hell, some languages are tonal. Different languages have entirely different alphabets and pronunciation rules.
If there is a major historical figure whose name originates from a foreign culture, you’ll still want to talk about that person. However, very few people will be able to correctly pronounce the name. So, what every culture does, what every culture has always done, is to give historical figures a local name appropriate to the local language.
This is something humans have been doing since the dawn of time. Hell, living people do it today. Immigrants often pick a local name when locals can’t pronounce their name properly. And this happens in both directions. People coming to western countries often adopt local names, and westerners often adopt local names when moving to other countries.
This is something humans have been doing for tens of thousands of years. But no, go ahead and make some racist assumption about it being some evil thing those evil white people do.
Racial stereotyping isn’t cool, regardless of who you’re stereotyping.
Ibn Sina -> Avicenna seems to sound similar though, but I can’t speak Latin or Arabic.
At least the cenna and Sina part, you can see they’re related. The people Latinizing the name did not just roll a die I presume and had respect for the people who came up with something. It’s why algorithm and algebra are both directly from Arabic, algorithm from the guy who wrote this book:
The Concise Book of Calculation by Restoration and Balancing (Arabic: الكتاب المختصر في حساب الجبر والمقابلة, al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah; or Latin: Liber Algebræ et Almucabola)
At least in my opinion the Latinization does not seek to hide the fact it’s Arabic. In fact, it just takes (directly) untranslatable Arabic terms and puts them into Latin.
It is not certain just what the terms al-jabr and muqabalah mean.
No idea how “Ibn -> Avi” makes sense though, I’d be surprised if it was done with any hostile intent though.
It doesn’t come off as Arabic and for a long time I myself, despite having known the Arab name, thought it was a different western guy.
This is is a largely unpopular take if you look into criticisms of how the west names things, provided one has a radicalization towards seeing things such as whitewashing etc.
“Stop latinizing”
We literally did centuries ago. No Arabic name is ever latinized because - aa it turns out - if you stop using Latin, you don’t need Latinization.
For existing names, I don’t see a problem with using the historic remnant. It was useful at the time because of Latin grammar and the Latin names are much more well established.
It happened with every name by the way. See Confucius, Nostradamus or Copernicus.
What localized name should you call Copernicus by the way?
The Latin Nicolaus Copernicus?
The Polish Mikołaj Kopernik?
The Middle Low German Niklas Koppernigk?
The Modern German Nikolaus Kopernikus?
Turns out being a scientist in a multilingual region leads to a bunch of different names.
No, I disagree - same with countries names. Would be good to not anglicize or Latinize anything anymore. It’s ok if people expand their boundaries and pronunciation skills.
Call the person or thing by what they go/went by.
We recently did it with “Türkiye”.
We did not do it with “Türkiye”. Also note that ü is a different letter from u, not just a u with decoration.
The Turkish government requested international organizations to refer to Turkey that way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey
Everyone else continues to call it Turkey, especially newspapers. It’s why the Wikipedia article continues to be called “Turkey”. Neither me nor you are a country or international organization.
Same with Ivory Coast and its official name “Côte d’Ivoire”.
That’s simply restating something that I said we should do differently.
A country requested to be called differently, and people still call it what they know it as. I’m saying it’s fine if we try to learn it.
Yes, u and ü are pronounced differently - more to my point.
The US prefers to be called “America” yet I still don’t call them by that name either.
I don’t need to abide by what some fascist Turk says you should call their country or not.
Maybe once Turkey stops trying to wipe out the Kurds I’ll respect what far-right Turkish nationalists want that country to be called.
Lol - That’s just deviating from the entire context of the discussion, but ok.
Guilty as accused.
Türkiye
Thanks for the correction, edited it. Not so hard.
But it’s so cringe when English speakers suddenly switch to a foreign accent to pronounce one word. And would you want to force speakers of other languages to do the same instead of using their own versions of English names?
Why is it cringe?
I guess because it seems fake? Maybe like it’s pandering.
Curious as to where you’re from? I can see it seeming false if you’re used to english speakers mangling everything non-english, but if you’re not it doesn’t seem cringe at all.
I even find it weird when people who do have that heritage do it. It just rings fake.
Theres a celebrity chef who is terrible for it. When 99% of the time on camera you have perfect American “non regional media diction” but pronounce “cilantro” or “Jalapeno” like someones abuela it comes across like someone putting on an act.
I guess you only speak one language?
This is how it happens when you speak several languages, and IMO there is not a one-fit-all rule to what to do.
Also pronouncing the word like it’s intended to? Well yes.
I only speak one fluently.
I think its jarring in that case because the english is so forced into that absolutely accent free state that doesnt exist outside of network television, that the switch up to a very spanish pronunciation of a single word then back into tv presenter is so abrupt. Its like skipping gears. Media voice, normal voice, normal spanish, exaggerated spanish. Skipping two gears is not going to be a smooth transition. Its not like a regular person having a regular conversation.
Well, it is absolutely like two regular polyglots having a conversation.
As I hinted, you’re just not used to it! Lean into it, those are the true words, and languages and cultures are fascinating.
Or so I think 😌!
Nobody is forcing anyone. It’s more about the purposeful latinization of something, i.e. the context of the OG post.
i was with you until turkey, that shit is just propaganda.
Countries are not people, we shouldn’t treat them as people. Individuals deserve to have their actual names used because individuals deserve respect, but nations are an arbitrary modern invention that makes the world worse.
How do you decide which is the “correct” native name for countries with multiple cultures and languages? Using all of them is exhausting and confusing, but only using one of them is oppressing the other ones.
Was more pointing to the fact that country/geographic names are often Anglicized because that’s how western maps would label them (incorrect translations or pronunciations).
There’s a pacific island nation changing their name to their original because for decades they were known as the colonizer name. Is that wrong or oppressive?
So I guess deciding what to be called would be up to that nation.
Dude. “We’ve always done it like that” is your argument? Can you not see how it would be beneficial to try and emphasise that a lot of contributions to science came from non-European scholars?
This was not good reading comprehension, if not malice
Disagree, he’s right on.
Nah, I’m arguing only to keep old and established names only. It makes in my opinion little sense to start referring to the one’s I mentioned as Kong Qiu, de Nostredame, or Koppernigk.
Feel free to use whatever name you like. Whether you choose to use the romanized or established latinized name is none of anyone’s business.
You’re saying this as if the process is latin specific. Just like how we can see Sheikh Zubayr written in the post in English, you could do the same in other languages, too.
It’s deliberate whitewashing of scientists that’s disgusting and your defending it here that’s appalling.
I never claimed it was specific to Latin? You can see it with the example of Copernicus that it was Latinized, Polonized (?) and Modern-Standard-Germanized.
Franz Liszt is called Liszt Ferenc in Hungarian. That’s because Ferenc is the Hungarian variant of Franz and Hungarian names are spelled backwards for some reason.
I could provide so many more options where people were given several names because they did not live in a monolingual region.
In Czech, women’s last names take on the -ová suffix. Even if they aren’t Czech, didn’t speak Czech or never set a foot into Czechia. For example: Hillary Clintonová
I frankly don’t care enough about what languages do to names. If the intent is to wipe out other cultures then it’s obviously bad. Like colonizing Brits did with native landmarks (e.g. Uluru -> Ayer’s Rock). If the intent is to adjust the name to a cultures grammar, pronunciation or similar, I couldn’t care less.
Except the intent is very much likely to wipe out other cultures here and not just to match grammar or pronunciation.
Franz -> Ferenc isn’t as drastic a change as Ibn Sina -> Avicenna
The former retains similarity to the original whereas the latter makes it completely unclear the origin was Arab.
Honestly, this is a racist stereotype. A European person does something involving other cultures, therefore it must be an act of extermination. You’re stereotyping everyone of European decent as a plundering imperialist.
Why assume malice when there are perfectly reasonable explanations? Specifically, the perfectly reasonable explanation of “to make the words pronounceable in the local tongue.” Different languages have different structures and phonemes. Hell, some languages are tonal. Different languages have entirely different alphabets and pronunciation rules.
If there is a major historical figure whose name originates from a foreign culture, you’ll still want to talk about that person. However, very few people will be able to correctly pronounce the name. So, what every culture does, what every culture has always done, is to give historical figures a local name appropriate to the local language.
This is something humans have been doing since the dawn of time. Hell, living people do it today. Immigrants often pick a local name when locals can’t pronounce their name properly. And this happens in both directions. People coming to western countries often adopt local names, and westerners often adopt local names when moving to other countries.
This is something humans have been doing for tens of thousands of years. But no, go ahead and make some racist assumption about it being some evil thing those evil white people do.
Racial stereotyping isn’t cool, regardless of who you’re stereotyping.
No, this is just playing the victim.
Let’s not pretend whitewashing as a means of cultural appropriation doesn’t exist.
Deflecting that by saying “Racist!” isn’t the defense you think it is.
Didn’t make this claim. You’re strawmanning my argument entirely.
Ibn Sina -> Avicenna seems to sound similar though, but I can’t speak Latin or Arabic.
At least the cenna and Sina part, you can see they’re related. The people Latinizing the name did not just roll a die I presume and had respect for the people who came up with something. It’s why algorithm and algebra are both directly from Arabic, algorithm from the guy who wrote this book:
Al-Jabr
At least in my opinion the Latinization does not seek to hide the fact it’s Arabic. In fact, it just takes (directly) untranslatable Arabic terms and puts them into Latin.
No idea how “Ibn -> Avi” makes sense though, I’d be surprised if it was done with any hostile intent though.
It doesn’t come off as Arabic and for a long time I myself, despite having known the Arab name, thought it was a different western guy.
This is is a largely unpopular take if you look into criticisms of how the west names things, provided one has a radicalization towards seeing things such as whitewashing etc.