Yeah you have a very different mindset to me. I'd much, much rather people call me a name they know how to pronounce rather than listen to them butcher mine. I also think it's cool to have multiple names. Like Gandalf!
Many are my names in many countries,
Mithrandir among the Elves,
Tharkûn to the Dwarves;
Olórin I was in my youth in the West
that is forgotten,
In the south Incánus,
in the North Gandalf;
to the East I go not.
But that's the point, it doesn't matter what your mindset is. If a person's name is *a*, and you refuse to call them *a* because it's easier for you, then a lot of times that's offensive to people. Adding Gandalf and your opinion on how cool it is to try to downplay the disrespect doesn't change anything.
I've gone through almost 3 decades at this point with people either pronouncing my name wrong even after I've corrected them dozens of times (or they do it on purpose), or calling me an American name. It's tiring and the American one specifically is super offensive
The actual point is that this is a classic social battle: One person is offended having to adjust to X and the other person is offended if they don't adjust. So how do we solve this, who is objectively right? Either you put maximum value on people's emotional welfare then you'll side with camp A or you side with least amount of energy expenditure then you go with camp B or various other partial camps exist as well which will all have their own social media campaigns to win the war. As you can probably tell, I consider this all a waste of energy so you can guess what camp I am in but I'm also in many partial camps that still respect people's names that they want to use. Lots of common sense should be factored in ("hey, what if Turkey decides to change their name every 5 years? Every 5min? Every 5 seconds? I still have to adjust?") Anyway, we can be pretty sure that whoever is talking about this issue on social media is already part of their battle camp and not going to make fair arguments. Kind of how you immediately went to an unfair position by implying that you'd call him a totally different name (=Bob), and how his position is supposedly that "we dont care about what people want"
and how his position is supposedly that "we dont care about what people want"
Except their comment literally starts with
I don't care.
And you don't have to go to extremes of either bending over backwards for every request a person could have, or ignoring everything. It's very simple, if someone has a name, and you don't call them by that name even though they requested it, then you are being disrespectful. If someone is doing something considered too far outside the boundaries of the norm (changing their name every 5 minutes), then we can start putting limits. Otherwise I think it's very natural for someone to be want to be referred to themselves by the name they told you they prefer
Yeah there are various sub camps and I'm not sure I fit into the two main ones.
This was about names of places. How I say the names of places in my own language (English) is not for the governments of Ukraine or Turkey to dictate to me.
People are different. If Bob wants to change their name to Steve (or Stephanie) happy to adjust. If someones wants to be referred to by a name I can't pronounce I'll give it my best shot. If they get upset by my best shot - well that's their issue. My name is "Lewis" and very few non-native speakers seem to be able to pronounce it properly. No one has ever apologised over it, or asked me how to say it, and I haven't lost sleep over this fact.
I’m going to guess since your native country is English speaking, and I’m going to guess you grew up in said English speaking country. If these are the cases, then of course you can’t see why it would matter.
When you come from immigrant families like mine, these things matter more.
But also how is the name of a place any different? If Turkey was a person and asked you to call them Turkiye, would you have the same response? According to you, no. They aren’t asking you to call the US Birlesik Devletleri, they’re asking you to call their own country by what they deem is their proper name
Many are my names in many countries, Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, In the south Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.