Name Calling: Exonyms, Endonyms, and Autonyms

Pity the poor turkey! In French and dozens of other languages (including Turkish) it’s called the Indian Bird. In Portuguese it’s called “Peru”, in Spanish it’s Pavo, and in Dutch and many Germanic languages it is called some variation of “chalk bird”. In English, we call the creature a “turkey” based entirely on a historic mistake about its origin. The bird itself, of course, has no say in the matter.

Except for a brave few, most of us go through life bearing the name someone else gave us. Those of us who go by our middle names were granted a character-building gift from birth. And even such lovely diminutives or nicknames such as Billy, Maggie, or Rusty are generally bestowed by others.

Ditto for entire communities and nations. While the Germans call themselves Deutsch, the French call them Allemands, with the Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Turkish labels for German being recognizably similar.

Scotland was not originally the land of the Scots. The original (?) inhabitants, the Picts, were invaded by an Irish tribe who called themselves Scots, and who went on to consolidate power over the entire north of Great Britain and call their country Scotland. Little is known about the Picts, who live on genetically but have disappeared culturally, not because they couldn’t write, but because they chose stone as their media and didn’t leave enough of it around for us to learn much about them. And in any event, we don’t even know what the Picts called themselves, the label being stuck on them by the Romans who called them “Picti”, meaning “the painted ones”.

The Welsh live under a double insult. Not only are they not known by their own label, they are stuck with a name given to them by their invading enemies, the Saxons, who called them Wælisc, which means “foreigner”. Some irony. The Welsh call their country Cymru and themselves Cymraeg. They refer to the English as Sais and the English language as Saesneg.

We refer to names given us by others as “exonyms”, those given by ourselves as “autonyms” or “endonyms”.

As much fun as it is to think about the turkey and national names, the more important question is how we label ourselves, and whether we accept the labels others put on us. Do I think of myself as “Winner” or “Loser”? Do I meekly submit to a pejorative nickname, or do I challenge it? Do you accept “she’s just acting like a girl”, or do you call it out? Do I go through life hobbled because I came from “the wrong side of the tracks” or do I challenge that as a slur?

Do I meekly bow the knee to exonyms, or do I choose my own autonyms? Do I accept the label the world sticks on me, or do I tell the world who I really am?

It’s up to each of us, isn’t it?