conf/138672: ISO 3166 call Taiwan a wrong name, please call Taiwan "Taiwan" as before.

[Li-Lun "Leland" Wang]

The following reply was made to PR conf/138672; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Li-Lun \"Leland\" Wang" <llwang at infor.org>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
Cc:  
Subject: Re: conf/138672: ISO 3166 call Taiwan a wrong name, please call 
	Taiwan "Taiwan" as before.
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:23:03 +0000

 While we follow ISO3166, ISO themselves have said many times (in
 responding to Taiwan's request to change the country name in ISO3166)
 that the ISO3166 standard defines only the "country codes," not the
 "country names."  SVN rev 189767 was intended to use "official English
 short country names."  However, since ISO3166 does not define country
 names, the only thing official in ISO3166 are the country codes.  The
 official name of a country should be up to the people of that country,
 not ISO or UN or anyone else.  If we need another "official" source of
 country names, check out for example the CIA world factbook:
 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tw.html
 .  The conventional short form of the country name is listed as Taiwan
 in there.  CIA is at least a real government entity, while ISO is not.
  Since there are multiple "official" sources of country names, we
 should at least choose one that the people of the country in question
 prefers.  After all, where we use the country names (e.g. in
 sysinstall menu), is meant for the users in that country to recognize
 and choose.  Why should someone in another country care what some
 other country is called anyway?
 
 -- llwang