When writing code we spend a lot of time standardising things.
Language specifications mainly. General syntax. API’s. Data
Formats. The Web. We standardise all manner of things to make it
more convenient for anyone from anywhere to make things that
everyone can use. Being so used to all these standards, I was
quite surprised when I suddenly realised, that we don’t
standardise Country names. Think about it, in English, the
country Germany is named, well, Germany. In German, it’s called
Deutschland, in French it’s called Allemagne, in Danish it’s
called Tyskland - and these are all countries that are next
door! I haven’t even begun to look-up what German is in Arabic
or Chinese. So who’s correct? Well, the name that the country
gave itself of-course! Quite frankly, it puzzels me why anyone
would even go to the extent of creating a different names from
the ones they were given. I can just imagine the conversation:
“hello!, where are you from?” “I am from español.”“Oh really? Ah
yes, I see…. Well sorry old boy, e