naming a language

[Mikael Parkvall]

I have often wondered why there is such a passion for endonyms among 
linguists. It is one thing to avoid exonyms that the speakers might find 
offensive, but apart from that, I have a hard time seeing the point in 
using endonyms at any cost.

There are plenty of cases where there is a relatively established (in 
the linguistic literature) English term for a language, where later 
publications have opted for a new name, and where I can see no other 
effect than growing confusion. For people dealing with more than one or 
a few languages (such as typologists), this implies that you have to 
make an effort to know which language is which.

Having the same L1 as two of the previous posters, I would certainly not 
see any benefit in the linguistic community adopting ”svenska” for my 
language, rather than the more usual ”Swedish”. That would simply strike 
me as ridiculous, and indeed, no linguists use the endonym when writing 
in English. Yet, I somehow suspect that if the language in question were 
spoken primarily in a third world country, some linguists would have 
preferred that option.

Should the aim be to somehow to avoid Eurocentricity (or perhaps rather 
”national-languages-of-the-first-world”-centricity”), isn’t it 
Eurocentric in itself to use one naming strategy for these languages, 
and restrict another to everything else?

Even if one term is used more than another in the already existing 
literature, there may be reasons to choose another one. What the 
speakers themselves call their language, however, is not a strong reason 
to do so, in my view. Unless, of course, you happen to be writing in 
that particular language.

In a way, this can be compared to toponymical changes. There is a point 
in using Harare or Volgograd instead of Salisbury or Stalingrad, since 
the older names are, if nothing else, reminders of former régimes 
presumably not supported by the people who inhabit these cities today. 
But need we say Beijing and Guangzhou for what used to be been Peking 
and Canton? If so, must we start saying “the United Arab Emirates in 
Arabic”? (And should it be standard Arabic or the colloquial?).


Mikael Parkvall