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An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place , language , or dialect , meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language.

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106-604: The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb , al-Andalus ( Iberian Peninsula ), Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages . Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied

212-890: A civil war in 739 that lasted until 743 known as the Berber Revolt . The Berbers revolted against the Umayyads , putting an end to Eastern dominion over the Maghreb. Despite racial tensions, Arabs and Berbers intermarried frequently. A few years later, the Eastern branch of the Umayyad dynasty was dethroned by the Abbasids and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown in the Abbasid revolution (746–750) . Abd al-Rahman I , who

318-700: A pejorative way. For example, Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy (from the name of Egypt ), and the French term bohémien , bohème (from the name of Bohemia ). People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/ Gdańsk , Auschwitz/ Oświęcim and Karlsbad/ Karlovy Vary ); and Russian names for non-Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed (e.g. Kiev/ Kyiv ). In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce

424-567: A diplomatic mission to Constantinople on behalf of the Sultan of Fez Muhammad II he found himself in the port of Rosetta during the Ottoman conquest of Egypt . He continued with his journey through Cairo and Aswan and across the Red Sea to Arabia , where he probably performed a pilgrimage to Mecca . On his way back to Tunis in 1518 he was captured by Spanish corsairs either near

530-522: A heraldic symbol has been deprecated in modern North America . For example, the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism urges applicants to use them delicately to avoid causing offence. Endonym and exonym An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is an established, non-native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it

636-505: A hereditary trait with them; all but Sulaiman al-Zafir (God have mercy on him!), whom I remember to have had black ringlets and a black beard. As for al-Nasir and al-Hakam al-Mustansir (may God be pleased with them!), I have been informed by my late father, the vizier, as well as by others, that both of them were blond and blue-eyed. The same is true of Hisham al-Mu'aiyad , Muhammad al-Mahdi, and `Abd al-Rahman al-Murtada (may God be merciful to them all!); I saw them myself many times, and had

742-513: A high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants." According to historian Richard A. Fletcher , "the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. 'Moorish' Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e., Berbers from Algeria and Morocco." In

848-559: A neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names ( Dutch / Flemish : Brussel ; French : Bruxelles ). Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category . The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over

954-612: A translation of his Christian name, John-Leo, or Johannes Leo (Latin), or Giovanni Leone (Italian). He was also given the family name Medici after his patron, Pope Leo X's family. The same manuscript also contained his original name al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi. al-Hasan ibn Muhammad was a patronymic name meaning "al-Hasan, son of Muhammad", and al-Fasi is the Arabic demonym for someone from Fez, Morocco . Cosmographia et geographia de Affrica , later published by Giovanni Battista Ramusio as Description of Africa in 1550,

1060-515: A willing collaborator could provide useful information on North Africa. Leo Africanus left Rome and spent the next three or four years traveling in Italy. The death of his patron Leo X in 1521, and suspicions from the new Pope Adrian VI against a Muslim in court, was likely the reason for his leaving Rome. While staying in Bologna he wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary , of which only

1166-683: Is Leo's most famous work. He wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary for the Jewish physician Jacob Mantino . He also wrote an Arabic translation of the Epistles of St. Paul , which is dated in January 1521; the manuscript belongs to the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. Another surviving work is a biographical encyclopedia of 25 major Islamic scholars and 5 major Jewish scholars which

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1272-468: Is most commonly used. The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals, who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non-Chinese or non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce. The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s, which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings. For example, Nee Soon Road and

1378-718: Is not its Dutch exonym. Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms . For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad , not the Siege of St. Petersburg because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad ( Калининград ), as it has been called since 1946. Likewise, Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul )

1484-563: Is now spelled Xinyi . However, districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization , including Taipei , Taichung , Taitung , Keelung , and Kaohsiung . During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of

1590-672: Is presumably of Phoenician origin. Some sources attribute a Hebrew origin to the word. During the classical period, the Romans interacted with, and later conquered, parts of Mauretania , a state that covered modern northern Morocco , western Algeria , and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla . The Berber tribes of the region were noted in the Classics as Mauri , which was subsequently rendered as "Moors" in English and in related variations in other European languages. Mauri (Μαῦροι)

1696-670: Is recorded as the native name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was Maurusii ( Ancient Greek : Μαυρούσιοι ). The Moors were also mentioned by Tacitus as having revolted against the Roman Empire in 24 AD . During the Latin Middle Ages, Mauri was used to refer to Berbers and Arabs in the coastal regions of Northwest Africa. The 16th century scholar Leo Africanus (c. 1494–1554) identified

1802-497: Is still called Constantinople ( Κωνσταντινούπολη ) in Greek, although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 (the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase ). Prior to Constantinople , the city was known in Greek as Byzantion ( Greek : Βυζάντιον , Latin : Byzantium ), named after its mythical founder, Byzas . Following independence from

1908-572: Is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup ." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people ; both the Jingpo and Burmese use

2014-529: Is unlikely that Leo Africanus visited all the places that he describes and he must therefore have relied on information obtained from other travellers. It is doubtful whether he visited Hausaland and Bornu and it is even possible that he never crossed the Sahara but relied on information from other travellers that he met in Morocco. The historian Pekka Masonen has argued that the belief of his further travels

2120-960: Is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system. For instance, Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian , respectively, Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French , respectively, Niemcy in Polish , Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian . The terms autonym , endonym , exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to

2226-707: The Reconquista ("Reconquest") soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Kingdom of Navarre , the Kingdom of Galicia , the Kingdom of León , the Kingdom of Portugal , the Kingdom of Aragon , the Marca Hispánica , and the Crown of Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during

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2332-634: The Aghlabid Moors occupied Mazara on Sicily , developing it as a port. They eventually went on to consolidate the rest of the island . Differences in religion and culture led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe , which tried to reclaim control of Muslim areas; this conflict was referred to as the Reconquista . In 1224, the Muslims were expelled from Sicily to

2438-605: The Azawagh Arabs , after the Azawagh region of the Sahara. The authoritative dictionary of the Spanish language does not list any derogatory meaning for the word moro , a term generally referring to people of Maghrebian origin in particular or Muslims in general. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term moro is derogatory for Moroccans in particular and Muslims in general. In

2544-651: The Bangsamoro "Moro Nation". Moreno can mean "dark-skinned" in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, morapio is a humorous name for "wine", especially that which has not been "baptized" or mixed with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine. Among Spanish speakers, moro came to have a broader meaning, applied to both Filipino Moros from Mindanao, and the moriscos of Granada . Moro refers to all things dark, as in "Moor", moreno , etc. It

2650-656: The Beijing dialect , became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s. As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme , English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used. Nonetheless, many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names, and even today they are often used in their traditional associations, such as Peking duck , Peking opera , and Peking University . As for Nanjing,

2756-490: The Crusades , as a pun on the bearer's name in the canting arms of Morese, Negri, Saraceni, etc., or in the case of Frederick II , possibly to demonstrate the reach of his empire. The arms of Pope Benedict XVI feature a moor's head, crowned and collared red, in reference to the arms of Freising, Germany . In the case of Corsica and Sardinia, the blindfolded moors' heads in the four quarters have long been said to represent

2862-606: The Greek root word ónoma ( ὄνομα , 'name'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nómn̥ . The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek: The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms. Marcel Aurousseau , an Australian geographer , first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957). Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories: As it pertains to geographical features ,

2968-852: The Inquisition in Spain . The Muslim population of Granada rebelled in 1499 . The revolt lasted until early 1501, giving the Castilian authorities an excuse to void the terms of the Treaty of Granada (1491) . In 1501, Castilian authorities delivered an ultimatum to the Muslims of Granada: they could either convert to Christianity or be expelled. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly. They were respectively called marranos and moriscos . However, in 1567 King Philip II directed Moriscos to give up their Arabic names and traditional dress, and prohibited

3074-630: The Isma'ili rulers of the Fatimid Caliphate . Four years later, the Fatimid governor was ousted from Palermo when the island declared its independence under Emir Ahmed ibn-Kohrob. The language spoken in Sicily under Muslim rule was Siculo-Arabic . In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniakes crossed the strait of Messina. This army included a corps of Normans that saved the situation in

3180-626: The Philippines , a former Spanish colony , many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao and other southern islands Moros . The word is a catch-all term, as Moro may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao people . The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since been appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym , with many self-identifying as members of

3286-466: The Roman Empire applied the word " Walha " to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence: During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in

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3392-557: The Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling. Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'." In Basque , the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French). Many millennia earlier,

3498-514: The Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones". The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name " Apache " most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The name " Sioux ", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux , most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, * -a·towe· ('foreign-speaking). The name " Comanche " comes from

3604-547: The Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects. For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew -Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (Hanyu Pinyin: Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au-kang

3710-695: The Strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula , and in a series of raids they conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania . Their general, Tariq ibn Ziyad , brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They continued northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Maghreb fell into

3816-541: The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines: For example, India , China , Egypt , and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat ( भारत ), Zhōngguó ( 中国 ), Masr ( مَصر ), and Deutschland , respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example hydronyms for bodies of water. In

3922-511: The Ute word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym. Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal. Although

4028-467: The Venetian publisher Giovanni Battista Ramusio . The book proved to be extremely popular and was reprinted five times. It was also translated into other languages. French and Latin editions were published in 1556 while an English version was published in 1600 with the title A Geographical Historie of Africa . The Latin edition, which contained many errors and mistranslations, was used as the source for

4134-524: The settlement of Lucera , which was destroyed by European Christians in 1300. The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Spain, although a Muslim minority persisted until their expulsion in 1609. The etymology of the word "Moor" is uncertain, although it can be traced back to the Phoenician term Mahurin , meaning "Westerners". From Mahurin , the ancient Greeks derive Mauro , from which Latin derives Mauri . The word "Moor"

4240-561: The "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi); Russian немцы (nemtsy), Slovene Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian , Romanian , and Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to Austria ). One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term " Slav " suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence " Slovakia " and " Slovenia " for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context,

4346-755: The Algarve ". The Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in southern Iberia. On 2 January 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to the armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragón and Isabella I of Castile , the " Catholic Monarchs "). The Moorish inhabitants received no military aid or rescue from other Muslim nations. The remaining Jews were also forced to leave Spain, convert to Roman Catholic Christianity, or be killed for refusing to do so. In 1480, to exert social and religious control, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to allow

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4452-525: The Arabic part has survived, and a grammar of Arabic of which only an eight-page fragment has survived. He returned to Rome in 1526 under the protection of the new Pope Clement VII , a cousin of Leo X who replaced Adrian. According to Leo, he completed his manuscript on African geography in the same year. The work was published in Italian with the title Della descrittione dell'Africa et delle cose notabili che ivi sono, per Giovan Lioni Africano in 1550 by

4558-817: The Chinese word yeren ( 野人 ; 'wild men', 'savage', 'rustic people' ) as the name for Lisu people . As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example: In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g. German : Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian : Lubiana and Zagabria . Madrid , Berlin , Oslo , and Amsterdam , with identical names in most major European languages , are exceptions. Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst

4664-652: The English translation. There are several theories of his later life, but none of them are certain. According to one theory, he spent it in Rome until he died around 1550, the year Description of Africa was published. This theory was based on indirect allusion in a later preface to this book. According to another theory, he left shortly before the Sack of Rome by Charles V 's troops in 1527. He then returned to North Africa and lived in Tunis until his death, some time after 1550. This

4770-491: The Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them " barbarians ", which eventually gave rise to the exonym " Berber ". Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the Slavic term for the Germans, nemtsi , possibly deriving from plural of nemy ("mute"); standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak

4876-402: The Islamic territory in Iberia fell under the rule of the Almohad Caliphate in 1153. This second stage was guided by a version of Islam that left behind the more tolerant practices of the past. Al-Andalus broke up into a number of taifas (fiefs), which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Córdoba. The Kingdom of Asturias , a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated

4982-613: The Middle Ages. The term ascribed to them in Anglo-Norman blazon (the language of English heraldry ) is maure , though they are also sometimes called moore , blackmoor , blackamoor or negro . Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century, and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy , where they have persisted in the local heraldry and vexillology well into modern times in Corsica and Sardinia . Armigers bearing moors or moors' heads may have adopted them for any of several reasons, to include symbolizing military victories in

5088-404: The Middle East and another for Europe. He also planned to write an exposition of the Islamic faith and a history of North Africa. None of these books survived nor has there been any proof that he completed them, which might have been due to his possible return to North Africa. A fictionalized account of his life, Leo Africanus , by the Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf , fills in key gaps in

5194-429: The Moors ( Mauri ) as the native Berber inhabitants of the former Roman Africa Province ( Roman Africans ). In medieval Romance languages , variations of the Latin word for the Moors (for instance, Italian and Spanish : moro , French : maure , Portuguese : mouro , Romanian : maur ) developed different applications and connotations. The term initially denoted a specific Berber people in western Libya , but

5300-612: The Moors were dominant between 711 and 1492. The best surviving examples of this architectural tradition are the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada (mainly 1338–1390), as well as the Giralda in Seville (1184). Other notable examples include the ruined palace city of Medina Azahara (936–1010) and the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz , now a church, in Toledo , the Aljafería in Zaragoza and baths such as those at Ronda and Alhama de Granada . Moors—or more frequently their heads, often crowned—appear with some frequency in medieval European heraldry , though less so since

5406-445: The Muslims in mainland Italy. The trend of importing a considerable amount of slaves from the Muslim world did not stop with the Hohenstaufen but was amplified under the Aragonese and Spanish crowns , and was in fact continued until as late as 1838 The majority of which would also come receive the label 'Moors' Moorish architecture is the articulated Islamic architecture of northern Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal, where

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5512-492: The Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original. In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English, which has

5618-419: The Province of Guangdong ( 广东 ; Guǎngdōng ). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing; duck , opera , etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin , in the case of Xiamen , where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation. In

5724-402: The Russians used the village name of Chechen , medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus , a word for Hell , to produce Tartar ), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians . The Germanic invaders of

5830-406: The UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name Madras , now Chennai , may be a special case . When the city was first settled by English people , in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into

5936-430: The case of Beijing , the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as / ʒ / . One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi , which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh –Pinyin spelling of the province. That is because if Pinyin were used to spell

6042-409: The case of endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms), Chinese , German , and Dutch , for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén ( 中文 ), Deutsch , and Nederlands , respectively. By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories: Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of

6148-522: The continuation of further conquest, but an Arab assault took Carthage and held it against a Byzantine counterattack. Although a Christian and pagan Berber rebellion pushed out the Arabs temporarily, the Romanized urban population preferred the Arabs to the Berbers and welcomed a renewed and final conquest that left northern Africa in Muslim hands by 698. Over the next decades, the Berber and urban populations of northern Africa gradually converted to Islam, although for separate reasons. The Arabic language

6254-760: The endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural. Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the Slovene exonyms Dunaj ( Vienna ) and Benetke ( Venice ) are native, but the Avar name of Paris, Париж ( Parizh ) is borrowed from Russian Париж ( Parizh ), which comes from Polish Paryż , which comes from Italian Parigi . A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example: Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of

6360-404: The endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature. According to James Matisoff , who introduced the term autonym into linguistics , exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source

6466-400: The first clash against the Muslims from Messina. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse . Despite his success, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines. The Norman Robert Guiscard , son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060. The island

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6572-445: The former lower or untouchable castes) to Islam or descendants of a marriage alliance between a Middle Eastern individual and an Indian woman. Within the context of Portuguese colonization , in Sri Lanka ( Portuguese Ceylon ), Muslims of Arab origin are called Ceylon Moors , not to be confused with "Indian Moors" of Sri Lanka (see Sri Lankan Moors ). Sri Lankan Moors (a combination of "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors") make up 12% of

6678-464: The four Moorish emirs who were defeated by Peter I of Aragon and Pamplona in the 11th century, the four moors' heads around a cross having been adopted to the arms of Aragon around 1281–1387, and Corsica and Sardinia having come under the dominion of the king of Aragon in 1297. In Corsica, the blindfolds were lifted to the brow in the 18th century as a way of expressing the island's newfound independence. The use of Moors (and particularly their heads) as

6784-436: The historical event called the Nanking Massacre (1937) uses the city's older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence. Likewise, many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon (formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively) also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization, even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same. Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with

6890-428: The honour of being received by them, and I remarked that they all had fair hair and blue eyes. The languages spoken in the parts of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule were Andalusian Arabic and Mozarabic ; they became extinct after the expulsion of the Moriscos , but Arabic language influence on the Spanish language can still be found today. The Muslims were resisted in parts of the Iberian Peninsula in areas of

6996-421: The incentives put in place by Fredrich II. Some Muslims from Lucera would also later convert due to oppression on the mainland and had their property returned to them and returned to Sicily. During the reigns of Frederick II as well as his son, Manfred , a large amount of Muslims were brought, as slaves, to farm lands and perform domestic labor. Enslaved persons in Sicily were not afforded the same privileges as

7102-559: The island nation, and the Bengali Muslims were also called Moors. In the Philippines, the longstanding Muslim community, which predates the arrival of the Spanish, now self-identifies as the " Moro people ", an exonym introduced by Spanish colonizers due to their Muslim faith. In 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from northern Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania . The Iberian Peninsula then came to be known in Classical Arabic as al-Andalus, which at its peak included most of Septimania and modern-day Spain and Portugal . In 827,

7208-432: The island of Djerba or more probably near Crete , and imprisoned on the island of Rhodes , the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller . The usual fate of unransomed Muslim captives was slavery in Christian galleys , but when his captors realized his intelligence and importance, he was moved to the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome and presented to Pope Leo X . He was soon freed and given a pension to persuade him to stay. He

7314-487: The last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians. Islamic authors noted the tolerance of the Norman kings of Sicily. Ali ibn al-Athir wrote: "They [the Muslims] were treated kindly, and they were protected, even against the Franks . Because of that, they had great love for King Roger." The Muslim problem characterized Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily under Holy Roman Emperors Henry VI and his son, Frederick II . Many repressive measures were introduced by Frederick II to appease

7420-657: The letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori , having only one liquid consonant , is an example of this here. London (originally Latin : Londinium ), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms: An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands ( Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German ( Niederlande ), French ( Pays-Bas ), Italian ( Paesi Bassi ), Spanish ( Países Bajos ), Irish ( An Ísiltír ), Portuguese ( Países Baixos ) and Romanian ( Țările de Jos ), all of which mean " Low Countries ". However,

7526-545: The meantime, Spanish and Portuguese expeditions westward from the New World spread Christianity to India, the Malay Peninsula , Indonesia , and the Philippines . By 1521, the ships of Magellan had reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas Filipinas , after Philip II of Spain . In Mindanao , the Spaniards named the kris -bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today this ethnic group in Mindanao, who are generally Filipino Muslim, are called "Moros". The first Muslim conquest of Sicily began in 827, though it

7632-456: The modern exploration of Africa . For this work, Leo became a household name among European geographers. He converted from Islam to Christianity and changed his name to Johannes Leo de Medicis ( يوحنا الأسد ). Leo possibly returned to North Africa in 1528, reverting to Islam. Most of what is known about his life is gathered from autobiographical notes in his own work. Leo Africanus was born as al-Hasan, son of Muhammad in Granada around

7738-562: The name acquired more general meaning during the medieval period, associated with " Muslim ", similar to associations with " Saracens ". During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista , the term Moors included the derogatory suggestion of "infidels". Apart from these historic associations and context, Moor and Moorish designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic . They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria , Western Sahara , Tunisia , Morocco , Niger , and Mali . In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as

7844-678: The name moor is applied to unbaptized children, meaning not Christian. In Basque , mairu means moor and also refers to a mythical people. Muslims located in South Asia were distinguished by the Portuguese historians into two groups: Mouros da Terra ("Moors of the Land") and the Mouros da Arabia/Mouros de Meca ("Moors from Arabia/Mecca" or "Paradesi Muslims"). The Mouros da Terra were either descendants of any native convert (mostly from any of

7950-574: The name to Arabs , Berbers , and Muslim Europeans . The term has also been used in Europe in a broader sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in al-Andalus or North Africa. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names " Ceylon Moors " and " Indian Moors " in South Asia and Sri Lanka , now official ethnic designations on

8056-449: The new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India . Leo Africanus Johannes Leo Africanus (born al-Hasan Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi , Arabic : الحسن محمد الوزان الفاسي ; c.  1494 – c.  1554 )

8162-521: The next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista. In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve ( Arabic : الغرب – al-Gharb ) under Afonso III . He was the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title " King of Portugal and

8268-738: The northwest (such as Asturias , where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga ) and the largely Basque Country in the Pyrenees . Though the number of Moorish colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam . By 1000, according to Ronald Segal , some 5,000,000 of Iberia's 7,000,000 inhabitants, most of them descended from indigenous Iberian converts, were Muslim. There were also Sub-Saharan Africans who had been absorbed into al-Andalus to be used as soldiers and slaves . The Berber and Sub-Saharan African soldiers were known as "tangerines" because they were imported through Tangier . The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and

8374-434: The number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage. In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in multilingual cities such as Brussels , which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers,

8480-477: The popes, who were intolerant of Islam in the heart of Christendom . This resulted in a rebellion by Sicilian Muslims, which in turn triggered organized resistance and systematic reprisals and marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily. The complete eviction of Muslims and the annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s when the final deportations to Lucera took place. The remaining population of Sicilian Muslims converted to Catholicism due to

8586-750: The population. The Ceylon Moors (unlike the Indian Moors) are descendants of Arab traders who settled there in the mid-6th century. When the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they labelled all the Muslims in the island as Moors as they saw some of them resembling the Moors in North Africa. The Sri Lankan government continues to identify the Muslims in Sri Lanka as "Sri Lankan Moors", sub-categorised into "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors". The Goan Muslims —a minority community who follow Islam in

8692-557: The pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese (although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century), they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention, based largely on the Nanjing dialect . Pinyin , based largely on

8798-520: The propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country: Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese , many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most provincial names in mainland China , for example: Beijing ( 北京 ; Běijīng ), Qingdao ( 青岛 ; Qīngdǎo ), and

8904-474: The province, it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi , where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones, which are usually not written down when used in English. In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei , most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District

9010-474: The region. After an interlude, during which the Muslims fought a civil war , the invasions resumed in 665, seizing Byzantine North Africa up to Bugia over the course of a series of campaigns, lasting until 689. A Byzantine counterattack largely expelled the Arabs but left the region vulnerable. Intermittent war over the inland provinces of North Africa continued for the next two decades. Further civil war delayed

9116-563: The results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg , which became Petrograd ( Петроград ) in 1914, Leningrad ( Ленинград ) in 1924, and again Saint Petersburg ( Санкт-Петербург , Sankt-Peterbúrg ) in 1991. In this case, although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology, it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam , the Dutch name of New York City until 1664,

9222-420: The spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ. For example, the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English, but the French pronunciation [ paʁi ] is different from the English pronunciation [ ˈpærɪs ]. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades . Livorno , for instance,

9328-708: The usage of the collective term. The term has been applied at times to urban and coastal populations of the Maghreb , the term in these regions nowadays is rather used to denote the Arab-Berber populations (occasionally somewhat mixed-race) living in Western Sahara , and Hassaniya -speaking populations, mainly in Mauritania , Western Sahara , and Northwestern Mali . In 711 the Islamic Arabs and Moors of Berber descent in northern Africa crossed

9434-528: The use of Arabic . In reaction, there was a Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras from 1568 to 1571. In the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled Moriscos. The historian Henri Lapeyre estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants. Some Muslims converted to Christianity and remained permanently in Iberia. This is indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to

9540-600: The use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora . Another example, it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle . According to the United Nations Statistics Division : Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease

9646-618: The western Indian coastal state of Goa —are commonly referred as Moir ( Konkani : मैर ) by Goan Catholics and Hindus . Moir is derived from the Portuguese word mouro ("Moor"). In the late 7th and early 8th centuries CE, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate , established after the death of Muhammad, underwent a period of rapid growth. In 647 CE, 40,000 Arabs forced the Byzantine governor of northern Africa to submit and pay tribute, but failed to permanently occupy

9752-569: The year 1494. The year of birth can be estimated from his self-reported age at the time of various historical events. His family moved to Fez soon after his birth. In Fez he studied at the University of al-Qarawiyyin (also spelled al-Karaouine). As a young man he accompanied an uncle on a diplomatic mission , reaching as far as the city of Timbuktu ( c.  1510 ), then part of the Songhai Empire . In 1517 when returning from

9858-540: The years, the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris , where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne , where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or

9964-527: Was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy ; not far away, Rapallo , a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym. In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic),

10070-676: Was baptized in the Basilica of Saint Peter's in 1520. He took the Latin name Johannes Leo de Medicis ( Giovanni Leone in Italian). In Arabic, he preferred to translate this name as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (literally means John the Lion of Granada). It is likely that Leo Africanus was welcomed to the papal court as the Pope feared that Turkish forces might invade Sicily and southern Italy, and

10176-447: Was also adopted. Initially, the Arabs required only vassalage from the local inhabitants rather than assimilation, a process which took a considerable time. The groups that inhabited the Maghreb following this process became known collectively as Moors. Although a Kharijite rebellion would later push out Umayyad rule from the western Maghreb and form temporarily independent Arab, Berber and Persian dynasties, that effort failed to dislodge

10282-517: Was also used as a nickname; for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion. In Portugal, mouro (feminine, moura ) may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura , where "Moor" implies "alien" and "non-Christian". These beings were siren-like fairies with golden or reddish hair and a fair face. They were believed to have magical properties. From this root,

10388-407: Was an Andalusi diplomat and author who is best known for his 1526 book Cosmographia et geographia de Affrica , later published by Giovanni Battista Ramusio as Descrittione dell'Africa ( Description of Africa ) in 1550, centered on the geography of the Maghreb and Nile Valley . The book was regarded among his scholarly peers in Europe as the most authoritative treatise on the subject until

10494-426: Was based on misreadings by modern scholars who interpreted his book as an itinerary. At the time Leo visited the city of Timbuktu , it was a thriving Islamic city famous for its learning. Home to many scholars and learned men, Timbuktu also possessed a Great Mosque , renowned for its expansive library. The town was to become a byword in Europe as the most inaccessible of cities. At the time of Leo's journey there, it

10600-703: Was based on records by German orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter , who arrived in Italy and planned (but ultimately failed) to travel to Tunis to meet Leo who had since reconverted to Islam. Yet another theory said that he left Tunis after it was captured by Charles V in 1535 for Morocco, his second home country after Granada where his relatives were still living. This was based on the assumption that Leo, having left Granada, would not have wanted to live under Christian Spanish rule again, and his wish (recorded in Description of Africa ) that he wanted to ultimately return to his home country "by God's assistance". It

10706-475: Was completed in Rome before he left the city in 1527 and published for the first time in Latin by Johann Heinrich Hottinger in 1664. Unlike Description of Africa , this biographical work was hardly noticed in Europe; the book contains various erroneous information, likely due to his lack of sources when he was in Italy, forcing him to rely on memory. In Description of Africa , he referred to plans to write other books. He planned two descriptions of places, one for

10812-604: Was much interest in blondes in al-Andalus amongst the rulers and regular Muslims: All the Caliphs of the Banu Marwan (God have mercy on their souls!), and especially the sons of al-Nasir , were without variation or exception disposed by nature to prefer blondes. I have myself seen them, and known others who had seen their forebears, from the days of al-Nasir's reign down to the present day; every one of them has been fair-haired, taking after their mothers, so that this has become

10918-514: Was not until 902 that almost the entire island was in the control of the Aghlabids , from their capital Kairouan ( Tunisia ), with the exception of some minor strongholds in the rugged interior. During that period some parts of southern Italy fell under Muslim control, most notably the port city of Bari , which formed the Emirate of Bari from 847 to 871. In 909, the Aghlabids was replaced by

11024-713: Was of Arab-Berber lineage, managed to evade the Abbasids and flee to the Maghreb and then Iberia, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba and the Andalusian branch of the Umayyad dynasty. The Moors ruled northern Africa and Al-Andalus for several centuries thereafter. Ibn Hazm , the polymath, mentions that many of the Caliphs in the Umayyad Caliphate and the Caliphate of Córdoba were blond and had light eyes. Ibn Hazm mentions that he preferred blondes, and notes that there

11130-525: Was split between three Arab emirs, and the Christian population in many parts of the island rose up against the ruling Muslims. One year later, Messina fell, and in 1072 Palermo was taken by the Normans. The loss of the cities, each with a splendid harbor, dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. Eventually all of Sicily was taken. In 1091, Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta,

11236-455: Was the centre of a busy trade carried on by traders in African products, gold, printed cottons , slaves and in Islamic books. In an autograph in one of his surviving manuscripts, a fragment of an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary he wrote for the Jewish physician Jacob Mantino , he signed his name in Arabic as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (literally means John the Lion of Granada),

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