Talk:First Italo–Ethiopian War

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This article is part of the "Wars of Africa" set of articles nominated for Version 0.7. Discuss this nomination, or see the set nominations page for more details.

Why is this called the Italo-Abyssinian War and not the Italo-Ethiopian war? Abyssinia has never actually been Ethiopia's name; it was only known to the west as Abyssinia during various times. For example, French writing about Ethiopia during the 15th or 16th century (I don't remember exactly when) use the word Ethiopié. Furthermore, in the 4th century CE, in the royal Chronicles of Ezana (the ruler of the Ethiopian Axumite empire at the time), he mentions his dominion over a people called "Habashat" (today Habesha, used to mean Ethiopians or Ethiopians and Eritreans) in the Ge'ez (main Ethiopian language of the time) and South Arabian, but instead calls the "Habashat" Aethiopia (or something to that effect) in Greek (the text was written in all three languages). Clearly, Ethiopia has been the name that the west has known Ethiopia as for most of history, "Abyssinia" being short-lived and relatively recent.

Now, how can I request that this article as well as Abyssinian Crisis and Second Italo-Abyssinian War be moved to more correct article names using Ethiopia instead? Yom 03:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)