system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why don't we call countries by the names they give themselves?

For example, why don't we call Germany "Deutschland", or Japan "Nippon"? It seems almost rude to make up another name for a country, and it's not like I'm incapable of learning "Deutschland" as opposed to "Germany". I'd sure be a little offended if America was misspoken (Barring "USA", I understand letters and acronyms don't translate well)
gpt
Mostly it is just the way we have always been doing it. Sometimes we have been using the word for longer than the modern country has been around.  Let's look at a few examples.

**Germany:** Germany and words like it go back to the word the Romans used for the area around where Germany is now.  It was a bigger place than Germany that you see on a map.   There have been many countries around that area like Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire. None of them had the same borders as Germany now.  Modern Germany wasn't around until the 20th century. 

Deutsch originally just meant "people" so in a way it is less helpful to say the country of the people than use the word German for the area people have called Germany for thousands of years. 

**China:**  Names like China have been around since the 16th century. It probably came from some Portuguese explorers who told lots of people in Europe about it.  People in Europe used the word for a while and it stuck.  

The name Chinese people use: Zhōngguó means the 'middle' country, meaning that China is the middle of the world.  You can see why people might not want to use that.  Also, Zhōngguó is very hard to properly pronounce for an English speaker.  The way you might try to say it could mean nothing at all or mean something else in Chinese.  Is that even any better?

Now let's look at it from the other side. 

**United States of America in German:** Die Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika is a simple translation.  It exactly the same as The United State of America in meaning.  You probably notice though that Vereinigte doesn't sound like United at all.  If a German person said Vereinigte Staaten You probably wouldn't understand unless you knew what you were listening for.  German people also say US or USA but it is pronounced like oo-ess-ah.  Again it's the same meaning but different sounds. 

**United States of America in Mandarin Chinese:** Chinese people call it meiguo.  It doesn't look anything like America but it actually is.  Guo is the same as in Zhongguo it still means country.  Mei is supposed to sound like the 'mer' in aMERica. It also means beautiful which is nice.  Chinese speakers also have a hard time making the sounds in English so America is very hard to say.