I think you can see this in several ways: The way I see it, having local names for a country should typically be seen in a positive light, because those local names typically come from having a very long history of interacting. Basically, if your language has a dedicated name for some country, it’s likely because people from your countries were interacting way back when travelling across Europe could take months. Those long distances, coupled with language barriers and such, led people to translate names.
One good example I can think of is that the Norwegian name for Belarus is “Hviterussland” (literally “White russia”, which is a direct translation of “Belarus” from Belarusian). That name has been documented to have something like a 1000 year long history in the nordics, from when the vikings were travelling east. A couple years ago, the official name was changed to “Belarus”. Honestly, I think it’s sad that a a name that in a sense serves as a time-witness to the fact that we’ve interacted with these people for 1000+ years can be removed with the stroke of a pen because some people don’t know their history and didn’t like the name they’ve had in Nordic languages for 1000 years.
I think you can see this in several ways: The way I see it, having local names for a country should typically be seen in a positive light, because those local names typically come from having a very long history of interacting. Basically, if your language has a dedicated name for some country, it’s likely because people from your countries were interacting way back when travelling across Europe could take months. Those long distances, coupled with language barriers and such, led people to translate names.
One good example I can think of is that the Norwegian name for Belarus is “Hviterussland” (literally “White russia”, which is a direct translation of “Belarus” from Belarusian). That name has been documented to have something like a 1000 year long history in the nordics, from when the vikings were travelling east. A couple years ago, the official name was changed to “Belarus”. Honestly, I think it’s sad that a a name that in a sense serves as a time-witness to the fact that we’ve interacted with these people for 1000+ years can be removed with the stroke of a pen because some people don’t know their history and didn’t like the name they’ve had in Nordic languages for 1000 years.