RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34012, 28 November 1975, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

OTHER FAMES

Apart from the opportunities available at school there are two prime means of learning geographical names; one is travel and the other is following a good war in the newspapers. The lack of a world war for 30 years and the mounting cost of travel has undoubtedly had some effect on the average person’s geographical knowledge. Add to this the changes of name that are constantly occurring, and it is a wonder that anyone past the School Certificate year has a proper idea of the modern world map Some changes, of course, are long established and already well known. Who does not know, for example, that Van Dieman's Land is now Tasmania, and that the

Middle Island is now the South Island? More recently, the Commonwealth Gaines were of enormous help to fix some of the switches — especially in Africa. Everyone recognised the sound of Lesotho and Botswana after a while, although which was formerly named Bechuanaland and which Basutoland, and where precisely they occupied the map could probably have been ' answered correctly only by a fourth former. An earlier generation first learned that Abyssinia was Ethiopia, Constantinople was Istanbul, Manchuria was Manchukuo. Peking was Peiping Persia was Iran, and Siam was Thailand. And then the spellings where, it may be mentioned. it has taken Frankie Howerd to put

the “h" back in the middle of Bagdad. The Bedouin now has been known at one time as Beduin and even Badawin; Eskimo was (very French) Esquimau and therefore Esquimaux in the plural; Mohammedan was Muhammadan and Musselman — the last sometimes thought to be an Asian wrestler; Roumania was Romania and Rumania; and Tsar was Czar and Tzar. The list is so huge that the student of it could be excused for imagining that no self-respecting place, people or movement came into the modern world without refurbishing its label. Would anyone other than a sixth former reading comparative religion know that the Koran was once the Qur’an?