Dear Mr. Pothecary,
Notwithstanding Michael Everson's long scholarly reply (which I
largely agree with), I would like to draw your attention to the
disclaimer prominently heading the table of cross-references between
ISO 639 language codes and Windows and Macintosh codes
<http://www.unicode.org/unicode/onlinedat/languages.html>
"Please note, however, that the Unicode Consortium does not own or
maintain ISO 639 and neither bears responsibility for its contents
nor has the ability to change them. Please do not contact the Unicode
Consortium if the ISO 639 language names are not what you believe they
should be."
So while discussion of what the correct English name of
"Byelorussian" (or "White Russian", or whatever) may be interesting,
the ISO 639 language name is not something we can fix. The
purpose of the languages.html table is to provide the best information
we have regarding how Windows and Macintosh language codes match
up against ISO 639.
Regards,
--Ken Whistler, Technical Director, Unicode, Inc.
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