Bombay vs. Mumbai; Peking vs. Beijing

     The media has adopted the current trendy practice of renaming certain foreign cities, replacing their traditional, historical English names with the current local spelling and pronunciation of their names.

     This confusing practice reflects cultural selectivity, as it is only being applied to Asian names. In fact, specifically it is only being applied to certain Asian states. We do not pronounce Paris (pah REE) instead of (PAA riss). We do not write Roma for Rome, Torino for Turin, Athina for Athens, Salonika for Thessaloniki, Munchen for Munich, or El Qahira for Cairo for example, even though all of these local spellings are well-known, nor do we even write Krung Thep for Bangkok.

     Therefore, for Indian cities, we should continue to use Bombay, not Mumbai, Madras, not Chennai, Calcutta, not Kolkata, for example. For Burma (note I do not use the official name the Burmese military junta calls their state, “Myanmar”), Rangoon should be used, not Yangon, for example.

     For China, we should continue to use Peking, not Beijing, Canton, not Guangzhou, Nanking, not Nanjing, and Tientsin, not Tianjin, for example. I should note that Beijing is pronounced (bay JING), not (bay ZHING), as many in the media pronounce it. Regardless, Beijing, as well as these other alternate spellings, are the pinyin renderings of Mandarin Chinese words into the Latin alphabet. Pinyin was made the official style of rendering by the Communist Chinese. The use of pinyin has extended to all of China, even to areas beyond where Mandarin Chinese is the native language. For example, Urumchi has become Urumqi. Thankfully, even the liberal media has resisted the Communist Chinese effort to erase the name Tibet by replacing it with the pinyin Xizang, but the political effort to Sinicize non-Chinese peoples is nonetheless apparent.

     The practice of adopting local spellings or pronunciations of foreign cities and other place-names is historically confusing, inconsistent and politically biased. We conservatives especially should be careful not go along with this trend when speaking or writing to an audience that primarily comprises English-speakers, especially if the audience members do not share the same ethnicity as the people who created the local place-name.  An acceptable practice would be to note the current local spelling or pronunciation for any place-name, but use the traditional English one primarily.

     I am going to take this opportunity to criticize another media practice in regard to foreign cities. The media often includes the entire metropolitan area of a foreign city when reporting its population, without making it clear that it is referring not only to the city itself (the area within the city limits), but also its environs (the surrounding area, including its suburbs). This distinction should be made clear. Otherwise, it is false reporting. Although the population of the metropolitan area may be a useful datum in certain cases, it is misleading in a political or administrative context.