Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1891 — Geographical Names. [ARTICLE]

Geographical Names.

There has lately been established, by order of President Harrison, a “Board on Geographic Names” of the United States, made up of several officers of departments and bureaus of the Government. It is charged with the duty of decidingall unsettled questions concerning geographic names which arise in the departments. The decisions of this board on all disputed points connected with the spelling of the names of places, rivers, mountains, and so forth, and of the names themselves, will henceforth be accepted as authority by the departments of the Government, and eventually, no doubt, by the publishers of maps and text-books. The way in which this new board works may be illustrated by a single case. Most of the text-books spell the name of the great arm of the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Siberia Behring or Behring's Sea. It has always been known, however, since the sea bore this name, that it was derived from the Danish navigator, Vitus Jonassen Bering, who, while in the Russian naval service, first explored this sea early in the eighteenth century. Bering Russianized his Danish name into Ivan Ivanovitch Bering. Although the Russians have always spelled the name of the sea Bering, the Germans introduced an h into the name, and their spelling has been followed by English and American map-makers. The board, to which the matter was referred, has corrected the spelling, and in all Government documents henceforth it will be Bering Sea, not Behring Sea. Among the other disputed points of spelling the following may be noted: It is Chile, not Chili; Fiji Islands, not Feejee: Governors Island, New York, not Governor’s; Hudson River, New York, and Hudson Bay, Canada, not Hudson’s; Kongo River, Africa, not Congo; Hongkong, China, not Hong Kong; Puerto Rico, West Indies, not Porto Rico; Mount Rainier, Washington, not Mount Tacoma. The principles adopted by the board require the adoption in general of the spelling and pronunciation that are sanctioned by local usage. The possessive case is avoided wherever possible. The decisions respecting foreign names are in accordance with the English official svstem of geographical naming and spelling. In these foreign names the vowels are pronounced as in the Italian language, and the consonants as in the English. For instance, in Java, Banana, Somali, and Bari the a is pronounced as in father; in Fiji and Hindi the i is like English ee in beet; au is like ow in cow, so that we have Fuchau, not Foochow. The hard c is rejected for k, and we have Korea, not Corea.