Dual naming

Dual naming is the adoption of an official place name that combines two earlier names, or uses both names, often to resolve a disagreement over which of the two individual names is more appropriate. In some cases, the reasons are political. Sometimes the two individual names are from different languages; in some cases this is because the country has more than one official language, and in others, one language has displaced another.

Not to be confused with Double given name.

In several countries, dual naming has begun to be applied only recently. This has come about in places where a colonial settler community had displaced the indigenous peoples and started using names in the settler language centuries ago, and more recent efforts have been made to use names in the indigenous language alongside the colonial names, as an act of reconciliation.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the name 'Dari' replaced Persian (Farsi) after the 1964 constitution which was the only official language until the approval of the constiution in that year. In addition government also added Pushtu as a fellow official language in the country. [1]

Australia

In Australia, a dual naming policy is often now used officially to name landmarks that are of significance to local Indigenous Australians, but for which the most common name is European.[2] For example, the landmark with the Pitjantjatjara name Uluru and English name Ayers Rock is now officially named Uluru / Ayers Rock.[3] This marks a reclaiming of the pre-colonial name (as with K'gari in Queensland), rather than creating a new one.[4]

In the city of Adelaide, the Adelaide City Council began the process of dual naming all of the city squares, each of the parks making up the parklands which surround the Adelaide city centre and North Adelaide, and other sites of significance to the Kaurna people (the "Adelaide tribe") in 1997.[5] The naming process, which assigned an extra name in the Kaurna language to each place, was mostly completed in 2003,[6] and the renaming of 39 sites finalised and endorsed by the council in 2012.[7]

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands had their official dual name attested from 1916,[8] and was made official by the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Act 1955.[9]

Finland

In Finland, many towns have two names, one in Finnish and one in Swedish (the two official languages of the country). The two names are considered equally correct but are not used as a formal duality of names.

France and Switzerland

The official names of bilingual areas of Alsace, France, and Switzerland also apply. For instance, the German and French Swiss town of Biel/Bienne is the combination of its German name (Biel) and its French name (Bienne).

New Zealand

Similarly, some places in New Zealand have dual Māori and English names, such as Aoraki / Mount Cook.[10] The practice of officially giving certain New Zealand places dual names began in the 1920s,[11] but dual names have become much more common in the 1990s and 2000s, in part due to Treaty of Waitangi settlements.[10]

Northern Ireland

"Derry/Londonderry" has been used unofficially to circumvent the Derry/Londonderry name dispute, in which Irish nationalists used "Derry" and Ulster unionists use "Londonderry" for the city and county in Northern Ireland. The "Derry stroke Londonderry" spoken form of this has in turn engendered the city's nickname "Stroke City".[12]

Romania

In Romania, the cities of Turnu Severin and Cluj were renamed Drobeta-Turnu Severin in 1972 and Cluj-Napoca in 1974, respectively, for political reasons, as the communist government wanted to emphasize the cities' Roman origins.[13]

Spain

Another example of the phenomenon can be seen in the name of the capital of the Spanish Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. This combines the city's Spanish name of Vitoria and Basque name of Gasteiz.

United States

The Denali–Mount McKinley naming dispute is an example of a dual naming issue in the United States.

Border geographical features

A special problem occurs when the landmark lies on the border between two or more countries. For example, Mount Everest has several different names used locally.

See also

References
  1. Afghanistan constitution of 1964 https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Afghanistan_1964.pdf?lang=en
  2. "Principles for the Consistent Use of Place Names" (PDF). Permanent Committee on Place Names, Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping. October 2016. pp. 9, 19. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  3. "Dual Naming". Northern Territory Government. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  4. Enalanga, Marcellus (17 June 2023). "Renaming or reclaiming? Here's what happened with K'gari and what could change elsewhere". SBS News. Retrieved 27 June 2023.
  5. Adelaide City Council. "Adelaide City Council Placenaming Initiatives". Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi. University of Adelaide. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  6. Adelaide City Council. "Kaurna Placename Meanings within the City of Adelaide". Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi. University of Adelaide. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  7. "Kaurna place naming: Recognising Kaurna heritage through physical features of the city". City of Adelaide. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  8. Weber, Max Carl Wilhelm; Weber, Lieven Ferdinand de Beaufort, Max Wilhelm Carl (1916). The Fishes of the Indo-australian Archipelago. Brill Archive. p. 286. Archived from the original on 31 December 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Woodroffe, C.D.; Berry, P.F. (February 1994). Scientific Studies in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands: An Introduction. Atoll Research Bulletin. Vol. 399. Washington DC: National Museum of Natural History. pp. 1–2. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  10. "Frameworks of the New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa Version 3" (PDF). October 2010. pp. 40–42. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
  11. "Protocol for Mäori Place Names" (PDF). New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa. 14 August 2002. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 May 2010. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
  12. "BBC - Radio 4 - Routes of English". www.bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  13. George W. White (1999). "Transylvania:Hungarian, Romanian, or Neither?". In Herb, Guntram Henrik; David H. Kaplan (eds.). Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, and Scale. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 275. ISBN 0-8476-8467-9. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
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