I expressed some surprise that a UK journalist wrote about Canton rather than Guangzhou, but someone has posted a comment defending that usage, saying that Guangzhou is too Mandarin. Well, maybe it is, but to a cloth-eared gweilo it doesn’t sound much different from Gwong Jau, which is the Cantonese version (I think). Either is surely preferable to "Canton", which is a real dog’s dinner – it appears to be derived from the English interpretation of the Cantonese name for the province, Gwong Dung, romanized as ‘Kwang Tung’ and then mis-pronounced.
I remember when the BBC switched from calling the Chinese capital ‘Peking’ to calling it ‘Beijing’. I suppose that this was when the Chinese government was pushing to get Putonghua adopted as the national language. I’m not totally sure how the earlier pronounciation came about, but I guess it is a mis-pronounciation of the Cantonese name, Bak-ging, so it is understandable that a correct pronounciation of the Putonghua version was preferred.
I suppose it’s unusual to make a change like this, but reasonable when the original was basically a mistake. Other changes have come when colonies gained independence and adopted names in their local language (Ceylon became Sri Lanka, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and Salisbury became Harare, etc.), or where the old regime was overthrown (Persia/Iran, Burma/Myanamar), though these tend to be more controversial – The Daily Telegraph stubbornly carried on calling the country Iran Persia, long after the downfall of the Shah, and many people still refuse to use the name Myanamar because they disapprove of the regime. However, I can’t think of any other examples where the name of a city has stayed the same in the local language but the official English version has changed.
Why do I feel happy to say ‘Cantonese’ for the language but baulk at calling the city ‘Canton’? I suppose it just doesn’t sound right to mix the Chinese name with the English suffix (-ese). By the same token, I wouldn’t say ‘I speak Francais’ – well, probably I shouldn’t claim to speak French, full stop, but that’s another matter.
Actually, there is very little consistency worldwide when it comes to how to pronounce foreign cities, and I suspect that again it often comes down to little more than what sounds right. For example, I think most Brits would pronounce Paris as an English word (rather than saying ‘Paree’ as the French do) but Lyon in the French way (not ‘Lions’ as per the English spelling, Lyons). When Ajax Amsterdam were one of the leading European football teams, some people pronounced it as it spelt, but others thought that sounded odd – perhaps because there was a well-known brand of cleaning liquid with that name – and used the Dutch pronounciation ("Aye-yaks") instead. Is it pretentious to use the local pronounciation? Maybe it is if you are not consistent, just picking and choosing a few foreign names and sticking with English most of the time.
Pretentious, moi?
Ordinary Gweilo 
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