Off the Map: Curious Histories of Place Names - Hardcover

Nelson, Derek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568361742 ISBN 13: 9781568361741

Publisher: Kodansha America, Inc, 1998

Synopsis

Is it Rangoon, Burma (as the American media prefer), or Yangon, Myanmar (as their government decrees)? Is it Ivory Coast or Cote d'Ivoire? What keeps us from calling other countries by the names they use for themselves? The Hindu names for Indian isn't India and the Japanese don't call their country Japan. The tangled answers to these questions- and to dozens of other typonymic conundra- appear in this armchair adventure around the four corners of the globe (a biblical phrase that resulted in the belief that the earth was square).

About this title

From the Author:

Writing this book was both fun and enlightening.
Since I grew up in Japan, I knew that Americans don't always call other countries by their own names. We say Japan, they say Nippon. But until I started researching this book, I didn't know why -- and I had no idea of the number of countries whose real names sound foreign to speakers of English. Suomi, Sverige, Misr -- all countries whose names you would quickly recognize in the oddly translated versions that we are used to. Luckily for me as an author, the answer to why we don't use the "real" names is complex and entertaining enough to warrant a book. Here are a few hints: many explorers didn't care what the native people called their own lands, and conquerors often wanted to impose a different name on purpose to show ownership. Toss in centuries worth of misspelling, misunderstanding, and faulty translation, and you begin to get an idea. I talked to and corresponded with nearly 100 people in other countries during my research, and the experience re-drew my mental map of a world that I thought was familiar.

Synopsis:

Explores the origins of place names and the relationship between geography, cartography, and historical events.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha America, Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1568361742
• ISBN 13: 9781568361741
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192