My own nationality (and perhaps yours, judging by your username?) comes to mind, Dutch, which doesn’t even vaguely resemble the way we refer to ourselves (“Nederlands”), but is close to a very old naming of a region in our country (“Diets”, ca. 1200 - 1550), how we call Germans (“Duits”), who call themselves different as well (“Deutsch”), where the word “German” probably stems from Germanic, which refers to a historical group of people in Central and Scandinavian Europe, comparable to “Latin”.
We also translate Paris to Parijs, and Lille has an official translation to Rijsel but nobody uses that.
Sheesh if this were a codebase it would raise some serious questions about variable naming standards.
Pretty sure we had several posts on HM related to the weirdness of translations for names.
But there are cities like Denver. Luckier than others, in that respect ;)
It's a question of "how often do we need to mention this name"; only commonly mentioned get a translation or familiar-alphabet-munging.
Other countries needing to talk about provinces is more rare.
I know of Indian colleagues who go by an English-sounding name that is at least somewhat close to their actual name. Others have anglicized a spelling that is phonetically close.
The main difference is that you can ask them what they prefer as they’re right there.
It’s harder to ask an entire country.
E.g. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_II_del_Reino_Unido
It was a little surprising since I’ve only ever seen the Spanish kings referred to as Juan Carlos and Felipe in English-language media, never by translations.
Imagine if Bavarians insisted that everybody refer to their capital as "München".
Some people do translate their personal names. In china it's common for people to pick "english names" for interactions with foreigners in part because foreigners have huge problems pronouncing native names.
If you're attempting to call to somebody using a translated name, such a person might not recognize and respond to the name, unless they've had considerable time to adjust to it.
On the other hand, one is typically not walking around shouting a country's name to get its attention.
This is not a hard and fast rule, and the translation of personal names has a complex and somewhat sordid history, but there's your short answer.
On the other hand, the variance from countries to cities, provinces, etc... well... I have nothing to offer on that mystery.
like if people really gonna apply this standard they better do it consistently.
Sure, fine, whatever. Everyone deserves to be called by their preferred name. I find it weird though, because every country has a respectful exonym, so a direct translation doesn't seem wrong, and mixing languages seems even weirder.
I don't know why personal names don't typically get translated, but country names do, so this is not a hill worth dying on. It's just odd to me, especially since they are sticking with the colonial name instead of changing to some indigenous name.