Last night, American World Cup broadcasters insisted on calling Turkey, as I have always known that country to be called, “Türkiye” (rhymes with “yay”). It was driving me nuts.

What’s behind this is a lobbying campaign by the Turkish government. The Turks want a single global brand for the country, arguing that this better reflects the nation’s values. And because English is a lingua franca, they want to dissociate the name of the country from the American bird, or the slang insult deriving from it.

I hate this. I don’t think states should have the authority to request changes to foreign languages, and that’s what this is. “Turkey” is the English exonym for that nation. Just as “Germany” is for the land Germans call “Deutschland” or “Spain” is for the place Spaniards call “España.”

Exonyms are meant to render and make foreign places accessible to us as readers, as people who imagine them. And we’ve been losing them for years under the pressure of authoritarian governments. China has demanded that “Beijing” replace the English “Peking,” “Nanjing” replace “Nanking,” “Fuzhou” replace “Foochow,” and “Xinjiang” replaced “Sinkiang.”

Exonyms often carry history and cultural relations in them. The largest languages have exonyms for nearly everywhere on earth. But I’ve discovered in Irish a limited number of American cities: “Nua Eabharc” for New York and (you can guess) “Bostún.”