Like Germany vs Deutchland
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Basically, it’s much simpler to just follow your own language’s phonetics, pronunciation, and history when describing other countries, rather than needing to learn difficult words in sounds your language doesn’t have.
Because languages evolved differently. For some reason Germany probably has the most variant when it comes to the name of the country in different languages. The Japanese name for Germany is probably the closest to the German version, but I assume that’s because World war II
Different languages have different alphabets, and many don’t even have the same sounds. Most importantly maps and borders have changed constantly over time, so do we call the Caspian sea what Alexander called it or what Genghis Khan called it?
Also there are country like Egypt that the name “Egypt” is the closet to the original name khmet and the name the locals call it is “misr” simply means country this was first introduced in 600~700 ad ish by the arabs Invaders so
Not always calling country by its local name is the best
I literally asked my kid that yesterday about the Japanese language, how they say people’s names differently.
Because people use the words they want to use and those usually have a long history.
Germany for example. It first come from the Roman who knew they was a lot of tribes sharing similar languages around the region where Germany is today. They were not unified, yes they share some common things, but they didn’t consider themselves one nation. So the Roman did what make sense. They could just send envoy to all the tribes and try to bring them together so that they decided how to call their nation, since they were not nations. They were just a lot of independent tribes, some in wars with each other, some allied to each other.
No, they just saw a bunch of tribes sharing some common element and decided to call that Germania. Because well you do need a name for it. Different people each had their own name for the other people around them and some of those stuck more than others. By the time Deuchtland became a more known concept, well the name Germania was already well anchored in the language and the culture. Why change it, it’s complicated, it will be confusing for certain people and you gain no real benefit for doing so.
The biggest issues are spelling and pronunciation – good luck writing “China” or “Japan” as the natives do.
It is not without good reason that some Asians who regulary deal with Europeans/Americans and have a name that they know to be unspellable for their partners rather avoid embarrassing situations by adopting a nickname that can be easily written, pronounced and memorized.
What you’re talking about is the difference between exonyms (what foreigners call a place or people) and endonyms (what people call themselves or their land). These are found in [just about every language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonym_and_exonym).
Germany is an interesting example because it has a lot of varying names: Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish, Germania in Italian, Niemcy in Polish, and Saksa in Finnish, just to name a few. These widely varying names are largely the result of Germany not being an united region until 1871.
* The names Germany and Germania both derive from the Latin **Germania** , meaning “land of the Germani.”
* The Spanish Alemania and French Allemagne both derive from **Alemanni**, a Germanic tribe who the 9th century monk Walafrid Strabo claimed called themselves the Suebi.
* The Finnish Saxsa derives from the name of another Germanic tribe, the Saxons.
* The Polish Niemcy is thought to derive from the proto-Slavic **němьcь**, possibly meaning “the mute ones.” This is also the origin of the terms for Germany or Germans in all other Slavic languages; for instance, némec in Russian, Němec in Czech, and nemec in Serbo-Croatian all mean “German”.
* Deutschland, however, is an endonym. Deutsch derives from the proto-Germanic **þiudiskaz**, “of the people” or “of the tribe.” It’s of the same origin as the words **Dutch** and **Duits**, which is why they look so similar.
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