Pacific island Nauru said it will hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language.
Nauru would change its name to “Naoero” to “more faithfully honour our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity”, President David Adeang said in a statement Tuesday evening.
The tiny nation’s native language is “Dorerin Naoero”, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants.
“Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in a statement explaining the change.
“This name change will be reflected across the country, from the renaming of the national aircraft and ships, to official identity regionally and internationally, including at the United Nations, and across national official records and symbols.”
The government must hold a referendum because the name change requires altering the country’s constitution.
some interesting trivia from the article: Nauru is one of the world’s smallest countries, with a mainland measuring just 20 square kilometres (7.7 square miles).
Unusually pure phosphate deposits – a key ingredient in fertiliser – once made Nauru one of the wealthiest places, per capita, on the planet.
But those supplies have long dried up, and researchers today estimate 80 percent of Nauru has been rendered uninhabitable by mining.
Noel Phillips (primarily an aviation/airline YouTuber) had an episode where he went there! https://youtu.be/KbZ5aqCjiwo
A guano republic.
As an amateur linguist this is happy news
Important information for me. I maintain the companies’ list of languages for our interpretation systems. People are pissed if the name of their native language has a typo, or (in the native rendition) has a point or stroke or whatever wrong.
BTW, has anyone a native script rendition of Klingon? The transcription is “tlhlngan Hol”, but i have no native script version in the database.
I think if your Klingon colleague ever took offense, you wouldn’t be here writing about it. Good to show pre-emptive initiative though.
It is a database of languages offered on our interpretation system. We have a number of odd languages there, but they all have been used by customers, so that’s that. Yes, even Klingon. Theyhey did a live interpretation English->Klingon at a Star Trek Con at least once. And no, we don’t supply Klingon interpreters, we only offer the technical platform for interpretation.
Do you have lotr elvish and gallifreyan?
Nope. So far, no customer demand.
