Down With Synonyms!

The Economist tells me that the United Nations has "an official committee of geographers" to discourage the use of exonyms (the UN says an exonym is a "geographical name in a language, which is not spoken in the area in which the named object lies").  The Economist is right.

What does the UN take their justification for this to be?

"In the opinion of the UN, the use of exonyms impedes global communication."

Absolutely.  Just like speaking different languages impedes global communication.  Damn synonyms!

"In addition, their use is contrary to the UN's basic principles concerning one name for one object and thereby obstructs efforts to create international uniformity in the handling of names."

Well, having no more than one name per object certainly would've helped with Venus!

Considering the analogy between times and places, it seems to me that they're definitely on the right track with this.  It's always bothered me, for instance, that when we refer to, e.g., the distant past, we do so with contemporary language.  We should use the terms they used if we're going to refer to their time!  Really, if we're going to refer to a spacetime region, we should restrict ourselves to the names for it used in that region.  If there aren't any . . . well, the UN will figure something out!

Comments

[Aidan McGlynn]

I can't help but be reminded of the wise wise words of Death Cab for Cutie:

'Alone on a train aimless in wonder
An outdated map crumpled in my pocket
But I didn't care where I was going
'Cause they're all different names for the same place.

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun
And I knew no words to share with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
And all the different names for the same thing'

[Sandy Powers]

Stamping out exonyms: just one more way the UN works toward world peace? Seems futile, but if they can't stamp out nuclear arms, they may as well go after exonyms. (The terms "exonym" and "endonym" are not even in my favorite Webster's!)

[Shieva]

Hi Aidan, hi Mom!

In case you haven't seen it, there's a post on Crooked Timber that you might find amusing:
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/30/framing-god/

This, too, seems in violation of the UN's "basic principles concerning one name for one object" (assuming 'one name' in this context means 'no more than one name' -- otherwise, I have no idea what they're up to!).

Of course, if the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all one object (though, today at least, I'm not going to take a stand on whether they are! I'll leave the (relevant kind of) relative-identity theorists, social trinitarians and polytheists alone for now) then we were already in trouble to begin with. At least we are if 'Father', 'Son' and 'Holy Spirit' are sometimes used as proper names when they're used to pick out the, uh, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.