The weekend just past saw us having breakfast with F (sometimes referred to as F&H) who seemed to become quite agitated when we used the name Kata Tjuta. instead of "The Olgas." It seemed to upset her that we had reverted to the names these places had been given before the arrival of The First Fleet.
I spent an amount of time in the UK making sure that people knew the name for "Ayers Rock" had reverted to "Uluru" because I think it is important to recognise the order of arrival in this country of ours, that these places had names before we walked in and thought we could find a better name for them and perhaps we should name them after our mate's daughter or the like.
To take this one step further, which is something I like to do.... Why, when our alphabet permits, do we insist on changing the names of foreign cities? For years we've referred to Turin - now with the winter olympics we're calling it Torino and we seem to have no problem with it. Somewhere along the line someone has said "Torino, not the word we want to use, make it Turin." Why is that?
I like original place names and I like consistency across the globe. You can all send me your atlas and I'll correct whatever I can.
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2 comments:
Very good case in point is Auschwitz..... it is a Polish city, but why oh why does everyone use the German name?
For sure, and for those like me who need a little refresher on their history here's a link.
So we're saying that when it was returned to Polish control, the name should have reverted?
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