Who decides on state names in foreign languages?

Question

The questions really is just that: who decides what a state or country is called in foreign languages?

As an example, the official title of Germany is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland" which is usually translated in English contexts to "Federal republic of Germany". French has it quite similar in "République fédérale d'Allemagne" and Greek (at least according to Wikipedia) calls Germany "Ομοσπονδιακή Δημοκρατία της Γερμανίας". Just comparing those I see a few differences in wording: While in German, English, and French the word "republic" appears, in Greek it's "democracy". My Greek isn't good enough but it makes me wonder if those actually mean the same. The German language just like English has both words ("Republik" and "Demokratie") after all. Also, and that's quite interesting, Germany calls itself "Deutschland", in English and Greek is "Germany"/"Germania", and in French it's "Allemagne". If one goes back a bit in time, one would have to say that those are actually different people (in German: Deutsche vs. Germanen vs. Allemannen).

Now, without going too much into this example, I think it's obvious that one word doesn't necessarily find a literal translation in every language. I would even argue that a "Bund" is not in every sense the same as a federation. But who gets to decide how a country or state is called in foreign languages? I could find a few possibilities:

1. Every country maintains a list of its name in all possible (or necessary) languages.
2. No-one actually decides but every government may decide on what they're calling other countries.
3. There is a third party that maintains a binding list of all countries in all languages. (I'm sure that's true for the EU, but does maybe the UN have such a list for "the world"?)

They all have their advantages, and it might turn out not to be regulated even. But maybe it is. Do you know?

Answer 1

A country's government can insist on a specific name being used (and some countries like Côte d'Ivoire insist on their name not being translated) and other countries or international organisations will typically honor that, at least in a diplomatic context. Some countries also consistently use a specific name in (some) foreign languages in the hope of gradually influencing usage.

On the flip side, some organisations like the UN but also national geographic or statistical institute have experts or commissions that maintain some official list of countries' names. Depending on how formal they want to be, they might or might not honor the relevant government's preference or even actively resist it for political reasons (Myanmar/Burma being a somewhat well-known case).

So the UN does maintain a list (for all UN official languages) which is part of the UN Terminology Database but it's not binding in any way, even other international organisations in the UN system might use slightly different lists.

Answer 2

There are two answers which may or may not be identical. 1) A state decides how it should be called in other languages, nowadays often the UN official languages and the languages of other states with which it has a relationship. This would be the name they put on their embassy and official documents. 2) A state decides how it wishes to call another state.

There could be political, historical or cultural reasons for these being at variance.

That said, people often use common names rather than the official names, e.g. Russia instead of the Russian Federation.