PLACE NAMES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23442, 5 March 1938, Page 20

PLACE NAMES

AMERICAN CENSORSHIP The cramping hand of authority is coming down on the once free and independent choice of place-names in U.S.A.; a body called the American Board of Geographical Names is doing its best to discourage what it regards as undesirable "fancy " titles for hamlets and .townships, says the Manchester Guardian. But some of its objections seemed a little severe. One can understand raised eyebrows over the Hobo Hot Springs of California* but why object to Caress of. West Virginia, or the short and sweep' Coy, which is found as; a village name both in Arkansas and in Alabama. ? " There seems to be nothing specially wrong with Coy; it is not any more self-consciously romantic than the " Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain," which Goldsmith seems to have foisted on what was previously Lissoy—with the noi altogether surprising result that there are now at least 30 Auburns of various shapes and sizes, from cities to hamlets, in the United States. There- used to be a village called Auburn near Bridlington, but the encroaching sea took an even sterner line • than the American Board of Geographical Names and removed it bodily from the map. ~ One of the world's many Auburn* (there are some in Australia) has an alternative title which ought to satisfy simultaneously at least one" brand of local patriotism and also, perhaps, the sterner temper of those./ who think that Goldsmith's name" has too marked a flavour of the. pretty-pretty. In Ontario there is a "post village" which, according to the gazeteer, is. called Auburn or Manchester. Perhaps the natives call it Manchester on wet days. (London: papers please copy.)