Both words mean the same.
It is my understanding that "Autonym" refers to a persons real name, as opposed to a psuedonym, while an Endonym refers to the name a group of people give to themselves or their homeland, as opposed to an Exonym; The name outsiders give to said group of people or their homeland.
They are similar, but not exactly the same, and Endonym is more proper in this case.
A transliteration for the non-Latin alphabet sites. But Cologne really bothers me for example - it's Köln, not some Colog.
I can transliterate stuff, but IMO it's subomptimal. Most people on wl, including myself, speak english and are familiar with english names.
Most Transliteration, Especially from arabic, but also to a lesser extent from cyrillic and hebrew, return names that are pretty unrecognizable to any native english speaker. Just some examples:
Москва́ = Moskvá (Moscow)
دمشق = dmshq (Damascus)
القاهرة = alqahrة (Cairo)
תל אביב-יפו = tl abib-ifv(Tel Aviv)
القُدس = alqُds(Jerusalem)
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם = iְrvּshָׁlַiִms(Jerusalem Again)
And then there are the ones where they transliterate literally into the english names everyone knows, and then I just wasted some time transliterating it.
Астана - Astana
Улаанбаатар - Ulaanbaatar
Edited 2/14/2016 17:23:08