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Exonym and endonym


An exonym or xenonym is an external name for a geographical place, group of people, or language/dialect: a common name used only outside the place, group or linguistic community in question, usually for historical reasons. Exonym and xenonym are derived from the Greek suffix -ónoma ὄνομα ("name") and the prefixes ἔξω or ξένος- éxō ("out") and xénos ("foreign") respectively.

An endonym or autonym, on the other hand, from the Greek root words ἔνδον, éndon, "within" or αὐτο-, auto-, "self" and ὄνομα, ónoma, "name", is given by members of a particular ethnolinguistic group to the group itself, its language or dialect, or its homeland or a specific place within it.

Marcel Aurousseau, an Australian geographer, first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957). Endonym was devised subsequently as a direct antonym of exonym.

and can be names of places (toponym), ethnic groups (ethnonym), languages (), or individuals (personal name).

As pertains to geographical features, the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines:

For example, China, Egypt, and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Zhongguo, Masr, and Deutschland, respectively. Chinese, Arabic, and German are exonyms in English for the languages that are endonymously known as "Zhongwen", "al-arabiyah", and "Deutsch", respectively.


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