On June 1st, the United Nations (UN) accepted the name change from Turkey to Türkiye. The process for this change began in December, when the country’s president, Recep Erdogan, asked that its people adopt this term in all languages. The new name is the way the country is called in Turkish.

One of the reasons for the change is that the name of the country in English, Turkey, is an animal. For this reason, the alteration is also intended to dissociate the country from negative connotations linked to the bird. “Type ‘Turkey’ into Google, and you will get a muddled set of images, articles, and dictionary definitions that conflate the country with […] a large bird native to North America […] Flip through the Cambridge Dictionary and ‘turkey’ is defined as ‘something that  fails  badly’ or ‘a stupid or silly person,’” reasoned TRT World, the news network owned by the Turkish government.

The term Türkiye had already been adopted by the local population in 1923, when the country’s war of independence ended, and the nation was founded. Until then, the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire.

Changes in Other Nations

Name changes have already occurred for other countries. In 1935, for example, Iran stopped being called Persia. This happened because Iran means Persian in Farsi, the language spoken by the local population.

Brazil has also already changed its name a few times. It was called Terra de Vera Cruz and Ilha de Vera Cruz when the Portuguese arrived, while the indigenous people who already inhabited the region called it Pindorama. Later, the name Brazil was adopted to connect the country to pau-brasil, the nation’s native tree.

Questions

1) Which country is not an example of a name change according to the text?

a) Iraq

b) Turkey

c) Brazil

d) Iran

2) What do you know about Turkey?

Sources: Al Jazeera, CNN Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, The Guardian, TRT
World, and Veja S. Paulo magazine

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