sudanglo:But in the case of the UK, translate the reality of the governance - ie translate Kingdom as Reĝlando not Regno - and not what English speaker natives feel they are expressing in using the English the word Kingdom - which idea is very nicely translated by Regno.

Ok, so perhaps Miland is not set on Regno, but, Sudanglo, you certainly seem to be!

Can I just say that I'm from the UK and I don't have a problem with the use of reĝlando in this context. And I suspect that I'm not the only one!

I don't really understand all this talk about 'what English natives feel' when saying 'kingdom'!! Maybe we should just take a deep breath and look at the words without a mist of passionate emotion obscuring our view on things!

I'm happy to accept that there certainly are examples of 'regno' being used in this context. As has been pointed out, the Tekstaro contains two examples (and none of the use of 'Unuiĝinta reĝlando'). Still, when you consult the latest dictionaries, listen to the opinions of some leading Esperantists etc, then it also seems rather clear that 'reĝlando' is currently the more widely accepted form (and the reasoning seems rather sound).

All of this has indeed brought up an interesting point, though. We have the list of country names published by the Academy, but how about another list which shows the full official names of the countries? (which would cover the UK, too) Then we could all just accept whatever decision they would make...

As in the example given earlier, we have Nord-Koreujo (the widely used version in everyday speech), and then we have the official, full name of the country, 'Demokratia Popola Respubliko Koreujo'. It would be nice to agree upon this distinction for all the country names...

sudanglo:Surely Erinja the Bertilow argument is contradictory. On the one hand he accords the right to the North Koreans to name their country Demokratia Popola Respubliko Koreujo even though the country is not Demokratia.

But on the other hand he suggests the UK should be named Unuiĝinta Reĝlando because it is called a Kingdom in English - totally ignoring the fact that native speakers of English may feel quite rightly that the correct translation of this word in this context is Regno.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand your argument. Of course a country should be called what it wants to be called, regardless of how accurate that name is. But your message seems to presuppose that someone has actually taken a widespread poll of British Esperantists and determined that as a whole, they prefer regno to reĝlando, whereas all of the big bad nasty non-British Esperantists have been using "reĝlando" in opposition to the express wishes of the British people. However, last I heard there was no majority vote (or any vote whatsoever) of British Esperantists to determine whether they prefer "regno" or "reĝlando". In English, they call it the United Kingdom, and not the United Realm, or United Territory. Therefore you could say that reĝlando is the best translation of the English name (just as Demokratia Respubliko etc is the translation of North Korea's name in its own language - also doubt that anyone has polled North Korean Esperantists, if they were to exist, to see whether this is the preferred name).

Regno is definitely not wrong, it's a correct word to use. But I wouldn't personally use it, I think it's far too vague. The USA is a regno. Mali is a regno. North Korea is a regno. Taiwan is a regno and it isn't even acknowledged as independent by most countries. For these reasons "regno" seems like a strange choice to me. I support the right of others to use that word if they feel so strongly about it, but I personally don't like "regno" for this context.

I know everyone hates the "Google test" but as I've stated before I think it gives a good general idea of current usage ("general", and not "precise and scientific" being the operative word.) Reĝlando is found by Google roughly 200 times more than regno (that's reĝlando's 303 000 to regno's 1520), which says something about current usage. Limiting that to the uk web domain, we have 10 hits for reĝlando versus zero for regno - these small numbers are not statistically significant in my opinion, though it is notable that Google didn't even find one use of regno from an Esperantist in a UK domain. I admit that zero versus ten is hardly talking about large numbers, but zero is zero after all.

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For the record, I'm a British citizen, if that makes my vote count any more.

ceigered:Of course we don't pay for our Queen, what do you think we are, nuts?

Well, I guess the UK had better not test the loyalty of Australia by imposing a tea tax. That had unfortunate consequences elsewhere once ..