Throughout the history,except where we refer to the regimes that have governed Cambodia since 1975,we have refrained from using the name"Kampuchea" I have preferred to use "Cambodia"
because it is still more widely used in English than "Kampuchea" and also because we do not except the right of a regime to say how its name it to be pronounced in a foreign language ,I feel this especially in Cambodia case,because Democratic Kampuchea's documents,written in Khmer,showed so little respect for local pronunciation of other countries name and in fact often preserved the French pronunciation transliterate into Khmer! in other words ,I respect the fact that" Denmark"
Italy"and republic Dominica,are inside those countries,preferred pronunciations to the Anglicized "
Denmark" Italy, and Dominican Republic but should the person on the street in one of these countries, talking about America,be required to say "United States"?
Moreover,it is not as if we had been asked,after 1975,to give the Cambodian people back the name of an ancient Empire or of an Ethnic grouping battered by colonialism,that task was attempted by the Ill fated Khmer Republic,Kampuchea "derives from the Sanskrit 'Kambuja" the name of a tribe in Northern India associated with myth of Cambodian Origin,the name is as"Cambodia "in origin as New-York is "American"
