Ever been to Lontoo?

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Have you ever been to Lontoo? Perhaps you have, maybe you even live there. My friend from Mişr, has been up there for the last two years pursuing a degree in literature which she hopes to get in a few months. I always regret, how, because of a mix-up by my travel agent, I could not visit the wonderful country of Hellas in a trip to Europe a few years back. I regret not having seen the classical architecture or getting a feel of the ancient culture of that land. While you may manage to taste a plate of moussaka at some posh Delhi restaurant and pay through your nose, it would hardly be as good as the original you get in Hellas.

Under my glass table-top is a list of places I would like to visit someday. At the top of this list is Kalaallit Nunaat a snow bound dominion which intrigues many of us but few would manage to visit it in their lifetime. Years ago, when quiz contests were still popular, the twinkling-eyes quiz master would always ask the question – under which country does Kalaallit Nunaat fall, and we came to know from him that it is an autonomous country under the kingdom of Danmark or Denmark. There you have it. Danmark is the name by which Danes know their country. In other words Danmark is the endonym for Denmark, where in the heart-warming city of København, I had the luck to spend a few days at the spartan Cab Inn hotel to participate in a conference to save the planet from environmental destruction.

In our school days when many of us were budding philatelists we used to get those colurful stamps from Hungary marked Magyar Posta. This now makes it easy for me to guess that Magyarország is the beautiful country of Hungary. Thus Hellas is the endonym for Greece while Innuits and other peoples of Greenland call their country Kalaallit Nunaat.

Endonyms(a name used by locals) are no big deal for us Indians because we have at least three for our beloved motherland to be used at out moods, whims and fancies – Bharat, Bharatvarsha and Hindustan. Endonyms are an interesting study because they have a flavour of the culture, the whiff of the original while exonyms (names used by people who are not locals) often ring with the voice of the trader, the coloniser the outsider. So Egypt is Mişr to Egyptians while in English and other tongues it is the country of Egypt. The interesting thing about Egypt is that it is known by its endonym (Mişr or Maşr) in Bengali, Hindi and other Indian languages. The reasons in this case are not far to come by. India and Egypt had been trading for thousands of years and so the original names (at least in Indian languages) stuck. This is not surprising, for as we all know, languages are the repositories of the memories of civilisations. 

        That leaves my friend at Lontoo somewhat stranded, doesn’t it? Where in the world is this Lontoo where she has been studying her literature? Well, ask the Finns, because that is the name by which they know the British capital.

Some well known endonyms:

Sverige – Sweden

Deutschland – Germany

Hellas – Greece

Spain – España

Moscow - Moskva

Copyright 2009. Rajat Chaudhuri. All rights reserved.