The country Turkey officially changed its name to Turkiye (officially Republic of Türkiye) earlier this year? Are you using the new version of the name, or the old version?

Well, if I had occasion to write the name out, which I don’t…ever…I would use the new spelling. :)

I’m not writing about that country, but if I were, I would use the country’s own official identification of their territory. I’m not sure my keyboard would type that little thing over the u.

Like anything, it will be an adjustment but if that’s the name, that’s the name. Countries have changed their names or adopted their “new old” versions of their names forever, so once we get used to it, it will be a no brainer.

It’s kind of like other words and names for things and people which have evolved over time. When I was little, a black person was a negro, or black, and then it became African American, now it’s often black with “B” capitalized. Similar with Native Americans, who used to be “Indians” and then that changed. At first, it sounds odd when we start using the new, but then we become used to it. Another example is “ghetto.” Now, you’d never say ghetto, you’d say “urban area” or something different. Another is “Oriental” which, when I was little, was what would be said, now it’s Asian or East Asian.

I guess I will spell it that way if I am trying to get there from in Mumbai or Kolkata or Beijing.

But Turkey has spelled it Turkiye on their postage stamps for a hundred years. This is nothing new.

I would guess they never even named it Turkey, some English speaking person did.

If that’s the preferred spelling now I’ll start using it. I changed from Moslem to Muslim, Kiev to Kyiv, I spell Chanukah three different ways, this is just another word that is not English that is getting a phonetic spelling adjustment.

I will continue to call them Turkey to show my disrespect for that country, just like I will continue to call Twitter Twitter.

The English exonym is Turkey.

I don’t even know how to pronounce “Türkiye” or what that diacritic on the u means, nor do I really care.

I get pretty irked by nationalists of other countries insisting on long used exonyms in English being changed to words that aren’t English and that no one in English is going to pronounce correctly (like no one except Ukrainians and a handful of linguistically curious people pronounce “Kyiv” correctly—most are not even remotely close).

@jca2 One change that I learned recently is that it’s not The Ukraine, it’s simply Ukraine.

Old version. I don’t want to have to hunt for an U with an umlaut.

I hadn’t realized that, until I read this question. But seems a simple enough thing to do.

@Caravanfan If you spell out “Turkiye” on an iPhone, it autocorrects with the umlaut.

@raum when they get rid of that nut Erdowan I will pay them that respect

Fair enough.

The country hasn’t changed its name, they just want English-speakers to stop using the exonym ‘Turkey’, and use the Turkish-language spelling instead. I’m not even sure if it’s pronounced any differently. I don’t know why we would change, to be honest. We don’t call Germany ‘Deutschland’ or Finland ‘Suomi’ after all.