CONTRACTED NAMES

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1928, Page 4

CONTRACTED NAMES

THE SYDNEY TELEPHONES

The new Sydney telephone directory in its wholesale contraction of names, looks like a crossword puzzle to strangers who are unfamiliar with the suburbs, but who. on a. visit to Sydney, may have occasion to look up somebody’s address, or to write to somebody or other in suburbs. As is pointed out. the names of some ot the suburbs, in contracted form,-look like the expletives of a Welshman in the last stage of imbecility. People in other States, for example, or in New Zealand, who know as much about Hie streets and suburbs of Sydney as Sydney folk know about the streets and suburbs, of say, Auckland, may on a visit, direct letters to friends and addresses in the telephone diicctoij. “Forbes-st. Ash." for example, ma> look quite all right to strangers, but how many of them would suppose that this was a, contraction for Ashfield? Take again the contraction “Kog.” How many people outside of New South Wales have heard of Koga rah. As one of the newspapers asks, is it all worth the paper that is saved? The directory reveals one comforting fact, in face of the outburst against the migration of Southern Europeans, and that, is that Australia is apparently still in the hands of the British/ There arc 600 or more Smiths in the directory. 300 Jones, and a vast army of Browns. Columns ol Murphys and pages of Macgrcgors and McGregors suggest, that the Irish and the Scots also exercise some little in fluence in the land.