Same Old, Same New
Thursday, April 12th, 2007
You know how the song goes:
Istanbul-was-Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul-not-Constantinople
Been long time gone-Constantinople
Why did Constantinople-get the works
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks
I find this name changing business kinda amusing really. Why? Because last night my Friendly Travel Agent Bear asked me if I wanted a cheap flight to-Constantinople this summer.
I laughed. My Sunny Vampire Comrade just boggled at the name and asked “where’s that?” I just pointed him in the general direction of Anatolia-or-Turkey, if that’s what you prefer.
That got me thinking about how many cities/countries have had name changes. My Burmese cousins refuse to call themselves Myanmar-ese or uh, Myanmar-ans after the name change in 1989.
I have a mate who still tells me that he’s from Bombay-even after I corrected him that it’s now called Mumbai. He just laughed at my face and showed me a clipping from a major newspaper about a terrorist attack:
“…A string of powerful bombs ripped through a vital spine of Mumbai’s commuter train systems killing nearly 200 people. More than 6 million people ride the trains in Mumbai, formerly-Bombay…”
LOL. Even the people are confused. Me? I take delight in it. I love making an even bigger mess of things:
Me: Did I ever tell you about the time I went to-Rhodesia?
Mate: Where’s that???
Me: Slightly north-east of SouthAfrica
Mate: Uh…
Me: I think they call it-Zimbabwe-now…
Mate: >.<
One day I would love to try going to watch the Broadway musical Miss Ho-Chi-Minh but I think Andrew Lloyd Webber would balk at the name change from Miss Saigon to that.
Then I will have me some Beijing-Duck for dinner though I think that Peking-Duck would be tastier. Then to wash it all down I’ll get a glass or two of some Mumbai Safire gin and tonic. Or do you think that the lovely sparkling blue Bombay Sapphire would be better?
And what about my colourful-Madras-shirt? Would I eventually have to call it a Chennai shirt? And somehow I don’t Frank Sinatra would ever sound the same if he sang that he wanted to melt his little town blues and be a part of New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam instead of New York, New York.
Getting quite an education aren’t ya folks? I could go on about this topic but methinks I’ll stop here and next time my Friendly Travel Agent Bear tells me a story about a little west African nation called Burkina Faso (which roughly translates to “The Land Of Incorruptible Men” and its capital called Ouagadougou) I’ll tell him it used to be called Upper Volta.