NAMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 308, 29 December 1924, Page 4

NAMES.

There is a story of an actor being told, in the middle of a run, to make an alteration in one of his entrances. Instead of entering left he was to enter right. The unfortunate man struck his brow and groaned. "More study!" he said. The schoolboy is in a similar position. When, after great labour, he has succeeded in mastering the names of many important places, Governments inconsiderately step in and change names. St. Petersburg becomes Pctrograd, and no sooner has the pupil got used to Petrograd than it is called Leningrad, and the world is informed that if it does not put this new name on its letters, they will not be accepted. Then there was "Waikumete, which, after becoming a household word, was changed to Glen Eden. The latest is the decision of Norway to call its capital Oslo. This is too bad. Even the man who has to know geography may have to think a moment before he is sure which goes with which—Norway, Christiania; Sweden, Stockholm; so how are children and average adults going to fare? We may imagine an examiner chuckling over Oslo. "That ought to puzzle them!" he will say to himself as he puts it in the paper. Seriously, though, it is a grave business changing the name of a town or a country. Names are living things. They grow with the years; they collect associations; they become universally recognised symbols. To change them is to break with the past, and to plunge the world into ignorance. New Zealanders, for example, are not in love with New Zealand as a name, but proposals to change it leave them cold. The "Bulletin" calls it Maoriland, and Mr. A. G. Stephens is trying to popularise "Zealandia," but these well-meaning crusades make few converts. New Zealand this country is, and New Zealand it will remain. The name means something to us that no other name could mean. Besides, think of the trouble involved in getting the world, which cares so little about New Zealand, to recognise "Zealandia,"