Renaming (was: Aspects of ENglish Grammar)

Philippe Caquant scripsit:

> The people living in such Departements were feeling
> unhappy and despised (in fact, the problem was that
> the agricultural products exported from those
> Departements had a chance to be ill-considered by
> foreigners not understanding French geographic names).
A good enough idea.  It's clear that anglophones think of
Lake Superior as being "better" than the other American/
Canadian Great Lakes: it is the deepest, the largest,
has the purest water, etc., though etymologically it is
simply le lac superieur, the upper lake, the source of
the others.

> - then some people from Creuse and from Cher also came
> complaining: "Creuse" can be understood as "Hollow" (-
> rather depressing - in fact, it's from a river), and
> "Cher" as "Expensive"... (a river too). But the
> Administration said, hey, wait a minute, we won't
> change names every five minutes if there isn't a good
> reason for it, so for the moment Cher is still Cher,
> and Creuse, Creuse.
Generally such changes are straightforward in the U.S. when
the locals actually want them -- some places consider their
bizarre names to actually be tourist attractions -- as part
of the general anglophone belief that being able to change
one's name, or to give one's child any name, is an essential
liberty, to the point that no formalities are actually required
to do so, as long as there is no fraud involved (although
dealing with the bureaucracy is much easier if one gets a
court to take "judicial notice" of the change, for which a
fee is charged).

--
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies!    John Cowan <jcowan@...>
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Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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