Showing posts with label french language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label french language. Show all posts

Friday, November 28, 2008

Just a rant



I have noticed something unusual...or maybe not, about the French and their use of old names to countries or cities and not the said country's desired change of name. For example: I know in the USA, we now refer to the large Indian capital city as Mumbai, not Bombay, which it was called for hundreds of years. According to trusty wikipedia, Mumbai officially changed its name to Mumbai in 1996...In fact Bombay was a name imposed upon by the Portugese in the 16th Century, and Mumbai has deep Indian roots as a word. Yet the French still, up to today's paper reporting the atrocious killings there this week, as Bombay.

Another example: Peking or Pekin--now known as Beijing. Throughout the entire olympics it Pekin this and Pekin that. No, I thought...Beijing! On a quick wiki search I see that in fact the name Peking originated from French missionaries in the country 400 years ago...so that could be one reason for the holdover, and also that Peking is still recognized by Chinese postal authorities, but that Beijing is otherwise the new name..apparently this capital has changed names frequently.

The last one I noticed is Burma or the French Birmanie...since 1989 (wiki) has asked to be called Myanmar. Now I realize this name change is military imposed and this country has series government issues but, if they want to change it...? I know that US papers refer to it now as Myanmar...
I do think at least the French refer properly to Istanbul and not Constantinople, but I am now curious if there are other geographical name-based holdovers and also, why?