Show SLOW TO CHANG CHANGED CHANGE NAMES NAl OF CITIES Americans Not Prone to Make Alterations Since the nonstop aviators a from this country landed by the Golden GoldenHorn GoldenHorn Horn Born It has hns dawned on most of tl us for tor the first time that the Turks have been changing the name of their I great metropolis We Ye may have heard of Stamboul but never dreamed we would have ha to say Istanbul We e learned of It as ns Constantinople Constantinople Constantinople Con Con- the name the no Romans mans gave to what the Greeks called B Byzantium Byzantium By By- and antI In our secret thoughts It probably always will be Constan Constan- After the fall of the Russian monarchy monarchy monarchy mon mon- archy St. St Petersburg became Petrograd Petrograd Petrograd Petro- Petro grad only to be later loter as Leningrad 1 all nil of which was to be he expected from the mania of the BolshevIks Bolsheviks Bolsheviks Bol Bol- for tor uprooting er e everything connected with the old regime Then the Norwegians changed the name nome of to Oslo that of the old national capital across the theba ba bay China followed the fashion an when the capital of the republic lic was transferred to Peking PekIng Peking Pe Pe- king became In spite of our reputation for change the United States has displayed displayed displayed dis dis- played a n sui surprising permanence InthIs in inthis Inthis this respect Our urb urban n nomenclature nomenclature ture derived ed not only from the English Eng Eng- lash lish the French the Spanish and the Indians but from the classics and any other stra stray books that might have ha been read rend b by our more lettered city founders has persisted with little modification Sometimes the names were difficult of pronoun pronoun- elation clation or calculated to Inspire levity levity lev lev- ity but the original christening has generally held We e might have ha renamed renamed renamed re re- re- re named New Orleans for fOl Thomas Jefferson or St. St Augustine for Andrew Andrew Andrew An An- drew Jackson as the English altered the name nome of New Amsterdam to New NewYork NewYork NewYork York when they drove e out the Dutch During the war we en e resisted the patriotic pressure to give gl the capital of North Dakota a name less aug- aug of at though we yielded lel on the 1 point of sauerkraut at least for the duration of hostilities But Bismarck remained Bismarck and sauerkraut again became sauerkraut sauerkraut sauerkraut sauer sauer- kraut after a spell as liberty cab cab- bage However it ma may satisfy the ex ex- exigencies of nationalism or local politics poli poU- politics tics we hope for the sake of our learned hard-learned store of geographical knowledge that other outer countries too will leave e their city names as ns they are New New York Herald Tribune |