Spelling of foreign place names

[Cheery]

I'm reasonably familiar with mathematical notations, AP, and you have a point. But if I'm late for a flight on an unfamiliar road, I can more quickly process a sign saying "ΚΑΛΑΜΑΚΑ" than "Καλαμάκα".

I tought myself to read Greek (badly) by reading shops signs which were in capitals, when I was posted to Cyprus over 30 years ago. Last week in Rhodes I could read the road signs, in lower case, as I approached them, told my wife what they were and she said 'I'll take your word for that'. Then we saw the second sign in Latin script and it confirmed what I had read. I had spent a few weeks on an online course a month or so ago, and only stopped it when I had to write answers in Greek font and I didn't have the nous to get a Greek keyboard.

 

[LittleSister]

Well, yes for most of what you say. However, there is a ultilitarian aspect to the concept of "official" names;

I am not for a moment denying the utility of naming and mapping. That's an essential element of its power and importance!



I've been fortunate enough to be working in an area where an internationally agreed set of guidelines for naming were in place; this specifically barred duplicate names, so Antarctica does not suffer from a plethora of "Sgeir Dubh"s! There are also other conventions regarding the generic parts of names, which must usually be selected from an approved list, and the specific parts of names must be a single word (some historic names break this one). I was also working in an area where there is no native population, so all names are given by external bodies.

Antarctica is an interesting and distinct potential case study, for those reasons, you've now drawn my attention to. (Of course the very naming of the antarctic is interesting in itself.)

I'm curious whether, in this realm of heavily regulated place names, you and your colleagues didn't have nicknames, joke names or abbreviations for some places that deviated from those prescribed.

There is another aspect of place naming that you may or may not be aware of. The example I give is geological, because that's the area I am most familiar with, but I am sure similar issues arise in other fields. When a geological formation is named, it is named after a "type locality". This type locality become (essentially) the definition of the formation, and it's name is adopted as the name of the formation. Changing the name given to the location can obviously cause significant confusion and dislocation! Unfortunately, there are instances that I know of where geologists have give a formation a name which has then become the name of the locality; it was very difficult to reject a name proposal when it had already entered the scientific literature, even if the name would not otherwise have been adopted.

That seems a particular example of the common tendency for the complexity of social life to result in slippage in the naming order someone or some institution is seeking to impose. Your reference 'when it had already entered the scientific literature' is an interesting element in this example to me, naming being as dependent as it is on the recirculation of texts.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Once a name was approved, it was very rare for alternatives to be used. The reason is that the vast majority either follow a naming theme decided for a particular area (for example, composers on Alexander Island), or commemorate people respected in their field, or have a connection withthe person discovering or mapping the feature. So, once a name was approved, most people would be happy with it, and of course there was often an unoffical story behind some of the names as well as the official one! My own name is too common for me to have been commemorated in that way, and every single one of my names is already in use! The necessary factors in approving a name were:

1. There must be need for the name. In other words, the feature must be sufficiently prominent for there to be a need to refer to it by name.
2. The feature must be distinct and represented on a map.
3. The name must adhere to the guidelines I've suggested above.
4. The name must have a justification (there have been some rather far-out justifications to someone to allocate a name meaningful to themselves - my favourite is "Stygian Cove" - officially named because of its gloomy aspect, unofficialy because it was the name of the submarine that the person concerned served on in WW2!) A name I proposed was "Isengard Bluff", named because it was noted and mapped by a member of the group I worked in, which was called MAGIC (Mapping and Geographic Information Centre)
5. The name must NOT be merely descriptive; the reason is simple - if descriptive names were allowed , duplicates would be inevitable (Sgeir Dubh???)
6. If there is a historic name that can be shown to apply, it takes precedence, though it may be modified to conform with the guidelines on generic parts. For example, there was a feature known anecdotally as "Una's Tits" (Una being a secretary on the Falkland Islands in the 1950s - and quite a lady if the feature resembled her at all!). A few years ago, the feature was mapped accurately for the first time, and the issue of naming was raised. It eventually ended up as "Una Peaks" - ""Tits" or "Paps" not being in the list of generic terms ("Paps" nearly made it, I am told - so it wasn't bowdlerism!)

The main case where this have trouble was when an area well known to a lot of people was mapped accuartely for the first time. In that case, people will have applied names that are iin common use. Unfortunately, such names are often not suitable, usually because they are purely descriptive. This often caused a tense few days when a new map of a well-known area was published!