Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Thursday 11 May 2023

There's a Great Deal in a name.

Countries, cities, towns, villages, streets

(and of course people) have their names changed.

During the Revolution the nearby village of
Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val changed its name to
Libre-Val.  It returned to its full,
pre-revolutionary name in the 1960s.

The republican Irish Free state (established 1922)
changed the names of towns|
and counties containing the words King or Queen:

Kingstown became Dún Laoghaire; Queen's County
became Offaly; Queenstown became Cobh.
Dublin was renamed Baile Átha Cliath, but nobody
in her right mind has ever called it that.

The USSR had a fun time changing names of cities:
Nizhni Novgorod became Gorki, Tsaritzyn turned into
Stalingrad (of course),
and after that Great Dictator was denounced: Volgograd.

Königsberg became Kaliningrad. Now the Poles are 'officially'
re-naming it Królewiec.  The Lithuanians will probably
go back to calling it Karaliaučius.
Both of these mean Kingstown.
Kingstown-in-Russia.

I wonder when a Trump City will emerge
from defiled Floridian swamps ? As for other names,

I suggest that New York should now be called
Destruction-upon-Hudson,
Washington: Genocide-in-Raped-State
(as Virginia will henceforth be known)

and London: Mind-boggling Corruption-upon-Thames.


1 comment:

Wofl said...

On a quite different tack, a forest of a single tree in Utah has been named officially Pando.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/10/sound-artist-eavesdrops-on-what-is-thought-to-be-worlds-heaviest-organism-pando-utah