exonym

American  

[ek-soh-nim] / ˈɛk soʊ nɪm /

noun

Anthropology.

1. a name used by outsiders for a place, such as Florence for Firenze.

2. a name used by outsiders to refer to an ethnic, racial, or social group or its language that the group itself does not use, such as Chamorro rather than CHamoru .

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exonym British  

/ ˈɛksəˌnɪm /

noun

1. a name given to a place by foreigners

   Londres is an exonym of London

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Other Word Forms

• exonymic adjective
• exonymous adjective

Etymology

Origin of exonym

First recorded in 1955–60; ex(o)- ( def. ) + -onym ( def. )

Explanation

An exonym is a place name that's used by people who don't live there or speak the native language. While locals refer to their city as "München," most English-speakers call it by the exonym "Munich." Exonyms are created for geographical names, groups, languages, and even the names of individual people, usually by outsiders who find the real names (or endonyms) too difficult to pronounce or spell. This makes sense when you think of the world's hundreds of written languages — many of which use entirely different alphabets. That's how we got English exonyms like "Croatia" instead of "Hrvatska," and "Gabon" for "République gabonaise." Exonym has Greek roots that mean "outside" and "name."