What Is An Exonym?

An exonym is a name used in one language or culture to refer to a geographic location (a city, country, region, or natural feature) situated within a different language area or cultural context. In other words, it is how people outside a place name it, rather than the name used locally by the inhabitants themselves.

For example, in English we say “Germany” for what Germans call “Deutschland,” and “Florence” for the Italian city known locally as “Firenze.” Those English names are exonyms. Meanwhile, the endonym (or autonym) is the name in the region’s own language—like “Deutschland” or “Firenze” in those two examples.

Exonyms arise for several reasons. Sometimes they reflect older historical names carried through centuries of trade and travel. In other cases, they are the result of different sounds and spelling conventions in the adopting language. While exonyms can provide familiarity and ease of pronunciation for speakers of a particular language, modern usage trends may lean more toward using local (endonymic) spellings or pronunciations, especially when respect for cultural or linguistic identity is a priority.