Is it right if I say: Example: China
- Full Name: People's Republic of China
- Name: China
Example: United States
- Full Name: United States of America
- Name: United States
If wrong, then when to include the republican state's title?
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3 Answers
Countries generally have official long and short versions of their name. This has nothing to do with whether or not they are a republic: for example, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Normally, people use the short name but you can always use the long name if it makes things clearer.
In fact, sometimes, people use unofficial long names for countries for clarity. For example, Ireland is both an island and a country whose territory is about 85% of the island. Officially, the country is just called "Ireland", with no long form but people use the unofficial name "Republic of Ireland" to disambiguate between the country and the Island of Ireland.
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@XPMai In most cases, yes, it's fine to just say "China" and "the United States". If you're talking about the dispute between China and Taiwan, it might be better to use the more formal names but, in most other situations, "China" and "the United States" are fine. Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:11
In most cases, the short name of a country suffices. The long name is usually unnecessarily formal. However, you should use the official name in some diplomatically sensitive situations. Examples include:
- the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to avoid offending Greece over the use of the name Macedonia
- Republic of China and the People's Republic of China due to a legitimacy dispute
- Côte d'Ivoire instead of Ivory Cost, by request of the Ivorian government
answered Nov 17, 2014 at 10:09
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@XPMai: yes, your examples are correct. In the case of China, we often just say "China" when the meaning is clear from context. To be more clear, we might say "China" for the PRC and "Taiwan" for the RoC, or sometimes "Mainland China" for the PRC. Commented Feb 16, 2016 at 20:44
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2018 update: FYROM is changing its name to Republic of Northern Macedonia. Commented Jun 16, 2018 at 23:43
You include the full name of a state when you don't want ambiguity about what nation you are meaning to identify. In English, "China" might refer to either the Republic of China [Taiwan] or the People's Republic of China. America might refer to the United States of America, or one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. The "United States" could refer to the "United States of Mexico", the formal name of the country, or the "United States of America".
In most cases, especially informally, it is probably going to be acceptable to use merely "China", or "United States", or for the latter, even "USA".