Names of peoples (Jesus, creation, America, Hebrew, Greek)

[No*s]

Is it important to call a civilization by its preferred name? Is there any significicance to it? Often, a civilization calls itself something, but the name that comes into vogue is something else entirely...and is often derogatory. Is it important to keep the old name?

My favorite negative name change is the "Byzantine" Empire. There never was one. Constantine moved the seat of power of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (Nova Roma...Konstantinopoulos started as a popular name and gradually took over. It was "New Rome" at first) during his reign. While it is true that there were technically two emperors, nobody is confused about where they power was. In the fifth century, the Western Empire fell, but Constantinople continued without batting an eye. In fact, the Empire continued until the fifteenth century, and even regained control of the Western Empire for about two centuries in that.

It was renamed in really two phases. First, Charlemagne began calling them "Greeks." Now, this is technically true, because Greek was the language of the court, but it had a hidden double meaning: "heretic," and a heretic had no right to the throne, and hence, the Eastern Empire wasn't Roman. It was Greek, which allowed for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire. Later, this same sentiment was taken a step further. The Empire's formal name was removed and replaced with "Byzantine," which refers to a small village near Constantinople, which was later absorbed.

Nobody in the Empire, though, called themselves "Byzantines." The term was created as an academic slur, and it continues to this day, and it has harmed our view of the Roman Empire's history greatly. After all, are there any positive applications of the term (You have to love the Byzantine politics in history, after all)?

Now, I've gone into depth with two examples, and it's one I do tend to speak my voice on . However, does anyone else think names are important, and do they have examples? I know a couple of examples I can think of (like the Native Americans...most of whose individual names have been forgotten by most people).

[painted wolf]

That happined a lot with the FIrst Nations here in America. The names Navajo, Sioux, Cherokee and so on and so forth are all from other tribes many are insults. Almost no tribe is known by its real name.

The Cherokee name for our people is "Ani-Yun-wiya" it means 'real people'
Cherokee ment 'cave people' or 'people who talk a different laguage'

here are some sites on what current tribe names mean and in some cases who's word it really is. The second link is a realy good source on what the actual people called themselves.
http://americanindian.net/names.html
http://www.native-languages.org/languages.htm

many nations are trying to get away from the 'accepted' insulting names but it is an uphill battle. Most people don't care what we are really called.

wa:do

[No*s]

Thank you Painted Wolf. I wasn't aware that the names were insults. Thank you for the links. I will endeavor to correct my terminology.

[No*s]

I might add that I like the grammar links in it. It's the first time I've actually run accross linguistic information, and I have a vested interest in learning a little about "Choctaw" (I haven't crawled the site to determine a more appropriate name).

[Scuba Pete]

This happens with cities as well... Moscow, is really referred to as "Moskva" and Warsaw is "Varshava". I think it only polite to call people, cities, countries and nations by the name THEY call themselves. Nothing is more ethno-centric than trying to force our names on them.

[No*s]

I can understand those examples more. "Moskva" can easily morph in another language into "Moscow" as pronunciation changes. However, it is just as possible it was meant as an insult.

Some exmples of names being changed like this in Scripture are "Pavlos" for "Paul," "Jesus" for the Greek "I'isoos" for the Hebrew "Yeshua." Names with a "d" in them should be pronounced as "th" as in "the," and names with a "b" should have a "v" sound. Phonetics do change when changing languages, and that's understandable.

[painted wolf]

to elaborate on the pronunciation thing... Cherokee is actualy pronounced Tsa-la-gi, the native dialects had no R sound.
The idea of hard consonants was totaly forign and when they finaly heard them they thought they were rude.

as an aside the mispronunciation of words as an isult still goes on. Remember how Bush sr. refused to pronounce Saddams name correctly? He pronounced it more like Soddom.
Now he had to know how to correctly pronounce the name its a basic part of diplomacy to not fubar someones name, unless you are intenionally trying to get under thier skin.

wa:do

[Scuba Pete]

is gi pronounced like "gee" with a soft "ja" and a long "e" sound?

[painted wolf]

G is pronounced the same as in english in this case as G in Grape. I is pronounced as ee in this case.
The T is pronounced in this case like the j in jaw.

cherokee has these consonents in common with English: d g h k l m n q s t w
it doesn't have these ones: b f p r* t v x z (*there was a rolling R sound in the eastern/lower dialect but that dialect is now extinct )

if you want to know more check out: http://www.wehali.com/tsalagi/index.cfm

wa:do

[No*s]

How is the "a" sound pronounced?