animatedamerican:

patrickat:

glitchlight:

toast-potent:

captainsnoop:

i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves 

like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan. 

All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.” 

And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.” 

And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess. 

that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone

Nederlanders: We speak Nederlander in the Netherlands

Duestch: And the Duetsch speak Duetsch in Duetschland

English: Great, so you’re Holland and yall’re Germany

America: The first Amish were originally immigrants from Germany? Y’all are now the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Way too many of us English-speakers don’t even know that Germany doesn’t call itself Germany, Switzerland doesn’t call itself Switzerland, Egypt doesn’t call itself Egypt …

There’s honestly no excuse for exonyms to exist anymore.  We need to stop.