The New York Times, to its credit, has never adopted >Kampuchea, although it has recently started using >Myanmar for the country most of us know as >Burma. What about >Cambodia? A bunch of genocidal Khmer Rouge came along and renamed the country being terrorized why do we have to go along with their preference, >Democratic Kampuchea? We know it's no democracy besides, the key part of the new name is approximately the same as it was, with the spelling jerked around to please the local dictators why should you and I kowtow?Īccommodationists, doves, assorted linguistic roundheels and spelling reformers will say, ''A place is named whatever the local people name it,'' so if >Cambodia sounds like >Kampuchea in Khmer, that's the way we all must transliterate the sounds. Fine but if they want to change the names again, they should be required to wait. When British Honduras, British Guiana and Dutch Guiana became independent after that, they called themselves >Belize, Guyana and >Surinam. Upper Volta's organizers had their chance when the country proclaimed its independence in 1960. Safire's Law of Nation-Naming: You get only one crack at a new name in each century. ![]() >Burkina Faso means 'country of incorruptible people.' '' That's fine for them, and the United Nations can change all the metal place cards at the table, but it's still >Upper Volta to me. That's the new name chosen by the government of Upper Volta, which apparently tired of being asked, ''Whatever happened to Lower Volta?'' (There never was one.) A spokesperson for that country's Mission to the United Nations said, ''We changed the name because >Upper Volta was a colonial name not from us but from the French Government, and because we are more than just a location on the river Volta. ![]() I will go along with this change in about a year, when I become sure the Chadians mean it and everybody knows where the two cities are.īut ixnay on >Burkina Faso. THE PEOPLE OF Chad had good reason to change the name of >Fort-Archambault to >Sarh, and >Fort-Lamy to >Ndjamena: the new names are less warlike, contain no memories of a colonial past and are easier for local residents to pronounce.
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