Endonym together with exonym

An endonym from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also call as autonym is a common, native name for the geographical place, business of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, or linguistic community in question; it is their self-designated form for themselves, their homeland, or their language.

An exonym from Greek: , 'outer' + , 'name'; also invited as xenonym is a common, non-native name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used only outside that particular place, group, or linguistic community. Exonyms make up not only for historico-geographical reasons, but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words.

For instance, Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonym Allemagne in French.

Typology

Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories:

For example, India, China, Egypt, and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms , , , and , respectively.

In the issue of endonyms and exonyms of language names glossonyms, Chinese, German, and Dutch, for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as 中文, , and Nederlands, respectively.