The local authorities in the town of Webster, Massachusetts are planning to change the road signs that lead to the local lake. The sign leads to lake “Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg”, but it should actually lead to “Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg”.

According to the Guiness Book of Records, the name of the lake is the fifth longest word in the world and the longest lake name anywhere. The name originates from the local language of the Nipmuc indians. Freely translated, the name means “You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle of the lake”. A nice example of native Amercican divide and conquer…

The interesting bit, however, is that there are 26 spelling variations of the name in the US Geographic Names System and that none of these variations match the actual road signs.

Naturally, the authorities could spend time and money to find out how these mistakes have been brought about. I think, however, that an investment in standardisation would be a much wiser choice.

This example is of course rather extraordinary and the discriminating value of “Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg” is quite high. But different spelling of geographical items will eventually lead to toponymic confusion (see my blogpost earlier this year). Apparently, the inhabitants of Webster call the lake “Lake Webster”. I wonder whether that has got something to do with the pronunciation of Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg…?

The UN’s expert committee on names is expanding standardisation efforts in order to to make it easier to find your way in an increasingly globalized world. The most prominent examples of these efforts are the change from Bombay to Mumbai and of Peking to Beijing, thus re-installing the correct names from a pre-colonial era. But the toponymic name battle still has some major challenges. Some examples…

Naming places can be a potentially dangerous decision. The former Yugoslav republic which is now called Macedonia, was actually close to war with neighbouring Greece, because Greece feared an annexation attempt of its northern province, also called Macedonia. Officially, the UN calls the country the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia or FYROM. Fact is, however, that nobody in Macedonia actually uses that name…

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, a large number of countries changed the names of their cities in order to revert to pre-communist times. For example, the city Tashkent is now called Toshkent. It seems that this is only a small change, but for the people in Uzbekistan it makes all the difference.

In South Africa, which has 11 official languages, one can imagine the naming confusion as well. Is it Cape Town, Kaapstad or eKapa? Standardisation still has a long way to go. In the meantime, we should consider knowledgeable solutions to solve this problem. If we can cope in Brussel/Bruxelles and in Aachen/Aken/Aquisgràn/Aix-la-Chapelle, we should also be able to cope in the rest of the world.