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Home , Endonym and exonym

UNITED GROUP OF EXPERTS ON GEOGRAPHICAL

Working Group on Exonyms, , September 24-26, 2003

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THE UNGEGN DEFINITIONS OF “ENDONYM” AND “EXONYM” ______

Purpose of this Paper

Within current UNGEGN terminology there is an overlap whereby certain toponyms can be both an endonym and an exonym at the same time. It is recommended that the new Working Group on Exonyms should seek to remove this overlap. ______

1 Toponymic instinct and experience suggest that there ought not to be any overlap between the two terms “Endonym” and “Exonym”. A single geographical is most unlikely to fall into both categories. An endonym ought to be essentially a name created from the inside; an exonym a name bestowed from the outside. Yet the current UNGEGN definitions for these two terms, as given in the Glossary of Terms for the Standardization of Geographical Names1, leave an overlap whereby a single toponym may indeed fall into both categories.

2 The definitions in the Glossary are as follows:

Endonym Name of a geographical feature in one of the occurring in that area where the feature is situated.

Exonym Name used in a specific for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language has official status, and differing in its form from the name used in the official language or languages of the area where the geographical feature is situated.

3 This definition for endonym is basic and wide-ranging. It covers the name of any given geographical feature in as many languages as are spoken in the vicinity of that feature. Most significantly, the definition does not stipulate that, for the toponym to be an endonym, any of those languages needs to have official status. This absence of the word “official” in the definition of the simple endonym is clearly intended, for the Glossary also contains the following separate entry designed to cover endonyms which are official: Endonym, Standardized Endonym sanctioned by a names authority.

1 UN document ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/85, 2002; henceforth the “Glossary” in this paper

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4 By contrast, the definition for exonym in the Glossary covers the name(s) for a geographical feature in any language other than those which are official where the feature is located. Thus the definitions overlap; any endonyms which exist in an unofficial language are also exonyms.

5 The present author is by no means the first UNGEGN member to note this overlap. It has been pointed out in several previous papers, principally during the past 10 years or so by members of the East, Central, and South-East Europe Division. This is probably because some of the most striking illustrations of the overlap occur with regard to toponyms within or adjacent to the countries of that Division. Let us look at some examples.

6 In Romania, the sole official language is Romanian. But a substantial portion of the territory of that country is peopled by ethnic , living alongside ethnic but for linguistic reasons having a very different set of toponyms for the geographical features of that area. Thus, for example, the Hungarian community uses the toponyms Nagyszeben and Nagyvárad for the towns known in Romanian as Sibiu and Oradea respectively. These Hungarian names are certainly endonyms, on account of the well-established Hungarian community living there, but because Hungarian is not an official language in Romania, these toponyms are (according to the definitions given in the Glossary) also exonyms. Likewise the German-language names for these towns (respectively Hermannstadt and Grosswardein), used by the German community there, are also covered by both present definitions.

7 The countries of the former USSR also display overlapping toponyms under the current Glossary definitions. Cities as widely apart geographically as Buxoro (Uzbekistan) and Luhans’k () retain sizeable and well-established ethnic Russian communities, who naturally continue to use the toponyms Bukhara and Lugansk respectively. Thus the Russian forms are endonyms, but because Russian is not an official language in either Uzbekistan or Ukraine they must also be defined (according to the definitions given in the Glossary) as exonyms.

8 The author believes each of the toponyms highlighted in paragraphs 6 and 7 to be in reality an endonym only, and that their inclusion under the definition of “exonym” as given in the Glossary reveals a deficiency in that definition.

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9 We might also consider Switzerland, as an example of a country with more than one official language. The current Glossary definition would imply that (for example) all French and names are endonyms throughout the country. For geographical features close to the linguistic border between German and French this is of course true; Biel and Bienne are genuine endonyms for the same town. But are Waadt and Soleure really genuine endonyms alongside Vaud and Solothurn respectively? There is no significant German-speaking in the former, nor significant French-speaking population in the latter2.

10 The discussion thus far suggests that the problem of overlap occurs because the present Glossary definition for exonym includes the word “official” as regards language(s), while the corresponding definition for endonym does not. How can this be rectified?

11 To add the word “official” to the definition of endonym might prevent overlap with the definition for exonym, but crucially it would deny endonym status to all toponyms in a language which was not official in the area concerned. Nagyszeben and Lugansk would become exonyms only. A more attractive proposition to prevent overlap between the definitions is to remove the word “official” from the definition of exonym. By considering the languages which are actually spoken in a given area, rather than those which are official, Nagyszeben and Lugansk would become endonyms. At the Frankfurt international symposium GeoNames 2000, a definition which fully meets this requirement was suggested3: Exonym A geographical name used in a certain language for a geographical entity situated outside the area where that language is spoken and differing in form from the name used in the language or languages of the area where the geographical entity is situated.

12 Yet to remove the word “official” from the definition of exonym, so that that word occurs neither there nor in the definition of endonym, itself creates new problems. With the word removed, both definitions would depend solely upon what languages are spoken in the area of the geographical feature concerned. The question arises: “spoken by whom?”. It needs to be borne in mind that there are many towns and cities with substantial temporary (migrant or seasonal) , such as the Portuguese community working in the hotel and catering trades in Geneva. With a total removal of the word “official”, there is the possibility that the Portuguese name for Geneva (Genebra) might be considered an endonym, since that language is undeniably spoken by those Portuguese temporarily resident there.

2 Interestingly, the document Selected Exonyms of the German Language, published by the Dutch- and German-speaking Division of UNGEGN in 1999, includes Waadt as an exonym 3 Pavel Boháč, Exonym - One Problem of its Definition, 2000

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13 To avoid this scenario, and to determine which languages are (from our UNGEGN viewpoint) to be properly regarded as “spoken” in a given area, it is necessary to establish which language communities qualify for such a category. Obviously, official languages would normally immediately qualify as spoken languages within their area of relevance. Minority languages and national languages, both of which are terms defined in the Glossary, would probably qualify also. Yet none of these terms is adequate, or sufficiently comprehensive, in scope for our present requirements. It is true that Hungarian and Russian, for example, are minority languages within Romania and Ukraine (respectively) as a whole, but they actually constitute majority languages within much of their areas of relevance in those countries. And sometimes minority languages are the only official languages, as with English and Afrikaans in pre-1994 South Africa. So, for our present endonym/exonym purposes, the words “minority” and “national” are inadequate.

14 However, the Glossary also provides us with a definition “indigenous language”, and this is perhaps precisely the term required to denote a “qualifying” language. The term is defined in the Glossary thus: Language, indigenous language native to a given region This would encompass all the languages, in any given area, which are sufficiently significant to provide viable endonyms in that area. Such a language would therefore be one from a linguistically distinct community which has settled in a given geographical area for several generations, and has furnished that area with a significant spread of currently used toponyms in its own language. The language may or may not be official, minority, or national.

15 But, in any case, is the distinction between simply a question of language? Usually this is the case, but the example of the town of Aqtöbe in Kazakhstan shows that it is not always so. That name is the toponym in the Kazakh language, and it is therefore indisputably an endonym only. The established Russian community there uses the toponym Aktobe, which is therefore arguably also an endonym. But the Russian language outside Kazakhstan, in Russia itself, continues to use the older Russian form Aktyubinsk which, no longer used within Kazakhstan, is now genuinely and solely an exonym. Also, the country known in Mexican Spanish as México is known in Castilian Spanish as Méjico. It is therefore possible for a single feature to have a separate endonym and exonym in the same language4. Accordingly, to differentiate endonyms and exonyms by language alone, while normally a sufficient distinction, occasionally proves insufficient.

4 It is, incidentally, also possible for a feature to have two different exonyms in the same language: eg the German language exonyms Iglawa & Igel for the river Jihlava

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16 There remains one further outstanding question to be considered before returning to reconsider the Glossary definition(s). If “endonym” and “exonym” should to all intents and purposes be mutually exclusive terms, does this also mean that a given toponym is permanently classed as one or the other? With the current Glossary definitions, this is clearly not the case. According to the Glossary, while all indigenous names are endonyms, those indigenous names belonging to unofficial languages are also exonyms. So if, as in the Romania of the 1950s, a language (Hungarian) loses official status, its toponyms become exonyms. Conversely, if (as in South Africa in 1994) several languages suddenly acquire official status, then overnight their toponyms lose exonym status and become exclusively endonyms. This surely cannot be right; a toponym is by nature an endonym or an exonym. Nagyszeben is as much an endonym today as it was when the enjoyed official status within Romania. Likewise, eGoli has always been the Zulu endonym for Johannesburg; it did not magically acquire that status overnight when South Africa’s 1994 constitution was enacted. ______

Summary of this Paper

The author suggests that the Glossary term “indigenous language” should be introduced within the definitions of both endonym and exonym. He further suggests that, in the definition of an exonym, the concept of “official” should be replaced by “spoken”. ______

Paul Woodman

PCGN, United Kingdom August 2003

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UNGEGN GLOSSARY DEFINITIONS

Differences between current and suggested definitions are highlighted

Current Definition Endonym Name of a geographical feature in one of the languages occurring in that area where the feature is situated. Suggested Definition Endonym Name of a geographical feature in one of the indigenous languages occurring in that area where the feature is situated.

Current Definition Endonym, Standardized Endonym sanctioned by a names authority. Suggested Definition [No change]5

Current Definition Exonym Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language has official status, and differing in its form from the name used in the official language or languages of the area where the geographical feature is situated. Suggested Definition Exonym Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in the indigenous language or languages of the area where the geographical feature is situated.

Current Definition Language, Indigenous Language native to a given region. Suggested Definition [No change]

5 It is recommended that the toponyms portrayed in international cartography should normally be standardized endonyms

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