Jerseygirl

I also cannot abide seafood, or any kind of fish.

scotty9000

looks like the work of a 12 year old, seems a bit early for retirement

Gordon Barlow

Linda and I once (long ago) met the friend of a friend who had spent time In Bahrain and who always called it Bakh-rain; and every time she said the name she blinked her eyes with the effort of getting the -kh- just right. Of course ever thereafter we ourselves pronounced it her way, and chuckled.

Gordon Barlow

Pulling up a month-old post of yours, abner: what do you think of the slight change of name of Turkey - the country, not the bird? The new spelling is Turkiye but with an umlaut over the -u- , which of course is not an English letter. Wikipedia tells us the first syllable is pronounced "Tyr", which I take to be "tier", so the whole word would be tier-key-eh. Now the Turks themselves can pronounce it how they like, and the umlaut is present in the Turkish written language. But should we say Tier-kish in English? Is -ish kosher in the language of Tu-umlaut-rk-iye?

And for that matter, what do we do with the last syllable of Burmese, when we no longer say "Burma"? It can't be Myanmar-ese, surely! Or can it? How far must we go, to conform to the new rules?

What do you reckon?

abner

So might makes right, then. The big white fella transited through in 1770 and got to rename everything. Is that it?

***

Except he didn't: James Fraser didn't turn up to the area until 1836, at which point he and his missus were shipwrecked near present-day Rockhampton, and rescued by Aboriginal locals. He died in the aftermath, she didn't. Once she made it back to Sydney she made a fortune from her story, including complaints that she'd been asked to pitch in to communal tasks by the locals.

So "Fraser Island" wasn't named as such for "settlers" of any era, original or otherwise, but for a shipwrecked sailor who spent at most a few weeks there. Hardly enough, by your own exacting standard, to lay claim to the naming rights...

And so more recent Australians have judged his legacy in relation to the island -- and its name -- as ephemeral, and reverted back to a longer-established and better-grounded tradition for the name.

Surely you approve?

abner

Gordon, it's just not that hard. It would seem polite just to ask them how they'd like to be addressed, don't you think?

I don't have any plans to visit there, nor do I correspond with anyone from there. But if I did have the occasion to do so, I'd look up and/or ask about forms of address, and their accepted transliterations to English..

Just seems like the right thing to do.

Gordon Barlow

Oh, I do approve. I approve in the same way that I - if I had the authority - would re-name New South Wales, so arrogantly re-named by some other "big white fella". From now on I shall call it "NEW SOUTH K'GARI". I hope you will help it to catch on.