Why do we (Anglophones) use the native language name for some countries (Costa Rica, not Rich Coast), but not for others (Germany, not Deutschland)?
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It’s not only English doing it. If you check how European countries call each other you would find a lot of even more interesting things. Examples from my own language – Polish – is Niemcy for Germany and Włochy for Italy. We also call Hungary Węgry – with both names somehow different from Magyarorszag as they call themselves.
Stores behind each of those are interesting and often different, but tend to boil down to “people of X called people from Y name Z, as they have always done it because of some historic reason, and noone cared to change it”.
Then there are modern days name changes, where diplomats or tourism notices that name is problematic and starts a campaign. This recently happened in few countries, like Republic of Cabo Verde. The poor guys were called Cape Verde (Verde is green in Portuguese), which ended up being translated to specific languages, for example Wyspy Zielonego Przylądka in Polish. Which as you can imagine may be problematic, give that it’s only one of hundreds of translations from around the world. Solution worked, and they are now Cabo Verde for everyone.
The other funny one is Eswatini, which used to have a name very similar to the one of small European alpine country starting with S. Until their diplomacy said enough after one too many awkward situations.
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