Is the country's name Kampuchea or Cambodia?

Question

Cambodia seems like the obvious answer, but I heard that that is in fact an Americanism, because the yanks chose to acknowledge Kampuchea as being called "Cambodia" (kind of in the same way that I think a lot of countries didn't accept North Korea as being separate from South Korea, some time ago)

I'm not exactly sure about the history of the country, but looking it up I found "Sihanouk" the leader of the country, wanted to change the nation from being called Kampuchea to being called Cambodia in 1981, but in 1982 he ended up making a goverment of "Kampuchea".

So, basically if anyone could elaborate on my basic research, especially telling me about what the name used to be, if it were changed to Cambodia, when, and most importantly give not an American view of what the country is called, but a "Cambodian" view of what the country is called, that would be lovely.

Answer 1

Its name in Khmer is Preăh Réachéanachâkr Kâmpŭchea or Kingdom of Cambodia. Kâmpŭchea is the local name of the country, Cambodia is the English version of the name. It isn't the first country to have a different name in different languages (Deutschland - Germany...)

But since the arrival of Prime Minister Hun Sen there is a concentrated drive to use English everywhere and eradicate any trace of French (previous colonial masters) to replace it with English, which might explain the attempt to use the English version of the name Cambodia.