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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Burmese by any other name...
Message-ID: <Dy5E3o.6Hr@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <51melc$t7k@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 18:59:48 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <51melc$t7k@agate.berkeley.edu>, coby@euler.Berkeley.EDU (Coby (Jacob) Lubliner) writes:
-->In article <51keqt$27k@news.kth.se>, Bertilo Wennergren <bw@e.kth.se>
-->wrote:
-->>It seems that the English-speaking countries are very eager
-->>on all sorts of politically correct name changes, be it names
-->>of countries or names of ethnic groups (only small ones...).
-->
-->When Madagascar became independent it took on the official name of
-->Republique Malgache (analogous to Republique Franc,aise), which in
-->English became the Malagasy Republic.  American news agencies,
-->apparently not knowing that "Malagasy" is an adjective, promptly
-->began to refer to the country as "Malagasy (formerly Madagascar)",
-->somewhat like calling a certain European country "French (formerly
-->France)".

This brings up a bug-bear of mine, the name "Czech Republic".  We don't
refer to France only as the "French Republic"!!  (And "Slovak Republic"
is even worse.)

What's wrong with "Czech Lands", "Czechlands" (like "Netherlands") or
even "Czechia" or "Czechy"?

-- jP --

