claus@xn--frber-gra.muc.de (Claus Färber) writes:
BTW, there are a lot of other names from ISO 3166 that IMO should be
changed for everyday use:
Short name contains unnecessary parts from the full official name
(probably for political hyper-correctness):
IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF;IR => IRAN
LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC;LA => LAOS
MICRONESIA, FEDERATED STATES OF;FM => MICRONESIA
MOLDOVA, REPUBLIC OF;MD => MOLDOVA
TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF;TZ => TANZANIA
In all of these cases, a consistent form is followed: The part after the
comma forms a proper prefix of the `common' name, and when used gives you
the country's self-declared official name; taking the part before the comma
gives you the common name[1]. This makes automatic processing easy. Removing
the part after the comma from the database for the above countries yields
no benefit.
A different short name is more common (again, the UN name was probably
chosen for political correctness):
KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF;KP => KOREA, NORTH
KOREA, REPUBLIC OF;KR => KOREA, SOUTH
These names are[3] those chosen by the respective countries -- _that_ is
something I thing ought to be respected (so if Taiwan were to suddenly
start calling itself [in English] `Province of China Taiwan', well then
the argument is over I guess :-).
[1] The exceptions seem to be Laos, where the most common english name used
isn't present, and perhaps North/South Korea, as discussed above.
[2] Which as far as I can figure is "Republic of China (Taiwan)"; I'm not
sure how one would actually fit this into the comma-separated-prefix
scheme... :-/