Groups often wind up with the names that others give them. It’s highly doubtful that the original Tory party (see blurb) or the original Whig party (see blurb) gave itself that name. In addition, the religious denomination commonly called the Quakers didn’t give themselves the name Quakers (see webpage).
I probably first understood the meaning of the word Nationalists, in reference to the Chinese anti-communists, when I was in elementary school (early to mid-1960s). In World Geography class in junior high, we were made very aware of the term Nationalist in that context and were corrected if we said the phrase “the People’s Republic of China,” which we were told to call “Red China.”
To ignore all the abundant evidence (just type in nationalist or nationalists and kuomintang, kuo min tang, or any of the other variants–one night I stumbled on one or two online copies of, I think, pre-WWII books referring to the Nationalists) in favor of something that doesn’t even rise to the level of proper pedantry, and especially to be so adamantine about it–well, I’ll just say it may take some time for me to understand why anyone would hold such a position and hold it so vehemently.
I don’t often find myself using the adjective Orwellian, but. . . .