Free Republic

A fascinating new atlas, featuring cities that are renamed to reflect their etymological origins, is now on sale. Etymologists and wordsmiths will take particular interest in a new set of maps going on sale in time for Christmas. The traditional names for the world's cities, countries, rivers and mountains have been altered on an atlas to reflect their origins and literal meaning. Chicago, for example, is renamed Stink Onion and Cameroon is called the Land of Shrimps. The logic behind each place name is explained on the back of the maps. Cameroon comes from the Portuguese word camaroes, meaning...

A controversial NCAA decision restricting Florida State University's use of an American Indian mascot was based on incomplete information and will be reconsidered, a top NCAA official said Thursday. Walter Harrison, who chairs the committee that approved a policy directed at 18 schools with "hostile and abusive" American Indian mascots, said FSU has "good grounds" to appeal. Among the reasons, he said, are that the NCAA Executive Committee thought the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma opposed FSU's use of the Seminole image as a mascot. That was based partly on letters the committee received from David Narcomey, a member of the...

EUROPEAN bureaucrats will push forward legislation today to force the Scottish Executive to change place-names that offend or discriminate on the grounds of race and gender. In a move the Nationalists described as the "ultimate madness in political correctness", it has taken only a quorum of four Euro commissioners from Italy, Germany, France and Spain to redraw Scotland's map. The German commissioner, Arlo Pilof, the architect of the 2006 Race and Gender Equality Imposition Code (conformity), an amendment to existing rules, said: "We believe many names do not conform, and we started with Scotland because it is the worst of...