I don’t like that countries all over the world call other countries whatever fits their own language. In English we call these nations “Ireland” “Russia” “Palestine”. But these places are “Eire” “Rossiya” “Chungkuo” or “Falesteen”. Which other countries are good names before it gets translated. I do have small acceptions for places where they call it like DPRK or something where the name is just the same but translated but Rossiya makes more sense than Russia.
Turkey/Türkiye is an interesting case to watch. Recently their government demanded that everyone start using the second spelling. Honestly i couldn’t care less about this, people have been “translating” names of people and places into other languages since the dawn of time. Germany for instance is called Deutschland in German, Allemagne in French and Niemcy in Polish. Which one is “correct”? All of them, you use the one that corresponds to the language that you are speaking. For better or worse, we won’t be calling China by its Chinese name Zhōngguó anytime soon. And i don’t think the Turkiye change will stick either because in English the old version just feels more natural to say.
China is coming iitc from the Qin dynasty. There is also russian version “Khitai” from the Kara Khitai, that is Khitan empire (aka Great Liao).
I knew it was Китай in Russian but had no clue why, thanks