INTERNATIONAL BABEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

INTERNATIONAL BABEL.

WOBXD CONFUSION OF NAMES

Do you know how to address a letter from Denmark to Germany, or from Germany to Yugoslavia? Would you, in foreign exile, remember that Sotimaa is the Estonian for Scottish, or Gal Memleketi the Turkish for Wales?

Attention has been directed by the Royal Geographical Society to tlie_ confusion which prevails in regard to international correspondence, following the firm action of the Iran Government in informing the Universal Postal Union of its desire that Persia should formally be known as Iran throughout the world.

"We do not recall that any such action has ever before been taken," it is stated in the journal of the society. "In particular, the countries of Europe are so accustomed to the fact that their neighbours habitually use either variants or completely different names that it does not seem to have occurred to them that it was possible to remedy this inconvenience. The people of the Deutsches Reich have never, we' believe, taken any steps to persuade the Danes to give 'up calling their country Tyskland, the Poles calling it Niemcy, or the English calling it Germany. The action of the Iranian Government suggests " interesting possibilities." The librarian of the society has prepared a list of more than 000 national names as used in the principal countries of the world. Fiance, which might liavo seemed a safe enough name, becomes Eanska in Finnish and Prancuzija in Lithuanian. Italy, secure enough in Western Europe, becomes Wlochy to a Pole, while Hungary is written as Wegry in the same country. England is in all cases recognisable, but Britain may be changed to Suur-Briti, while Airiji, which is the Lithuanian for Ireland, is more suggestive of Japan than of fair Erin.