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Anyway, a recent XKCD comic (we’ll get to it near the end) got me thinking about one of my favourite group of word types, the names we give different types of names, or as I call them, the nym-words<\/em>.<\/p>\n The nym<\/em> word almost everyone knows best is the good old acronym<\/em>. These are nouns made up of the initials of the words that make up their true longer names, and, that we pronounce as words rather than spell out. So things like NASA, the US N<\/strong>ational A<\/strong>eronautics and S<\/strong>pace A<\/strong>dministration<\/em>, NATO, the N<\/strong>orth A<\/strong>tlantic T<\/strong>reaty O<\/strong>rganisation<\/em>, and RADAR, which is a little more stretched as it comes from RA<\/strong>dio D<\/strong>istance A<\/strong>nd R<\/strong>anging<\/em>. Strictly speaking the very similar nouns made up of letters we spell out like US and FBI are not acronyms but initialisms<\/em> by the way.<\/p>\n While acronyms are cool, I much prefer their more playful cousins the so-called backronyms<\/em>. These are acronyms whose long name is reverse engineered from the desired final acronym instead of the other way around. US law makers and scientists both love backronyms, with examples like the OWL Telescope, AKA the O<\/strong>verwhelmingly L<\/strong>arge T<\/strong>elescope<\/em>, or the USA PATRIOT<\/em> Act, AKA the U<\/strong>niting and S<\/strong>trengthening A<\/strong>merica by P<\/strong>roviding A<\/strong>ppropriate T<\/strong>ools R<\/strong>equired to I<\/strong>ntercept and O<\/strong>bstruct T<\/strong>errorism<\/em> Act (seriously)!<\/p>\n Something I share with the podcasters Helen Zaltzman (from The Allusionist<\/a>) and Roman Mars (from 99% Invisible<\/a>) is a love of eponyms<\/em>, or names for places and things derived from people’s names. (Their joint episode<\/a> is a must-listen for anyone who loves words!)<\/p>\n I wonder how many of the American NosillaCastaways know Pennsylvania is named for its founder, William Penn?<\/p>\n More interestingly, silhouettes are named for a French aristocrat who notoriously hosted parties where his guests had shadow portraits made of them while the peasants around him starved to death. Perhaps a little ironically, he met his end at the sharp end of another eponym, the guillotine, named for its inventor, Dr. Guillotine, a medical doctor who actually disagreed with executions but wanted to at least make them as humane as possible for the victims.<\/p>\n You can probably guess that the element Curium is an eponym named for the physics and chemistry power-couple Marie & Pierre Curie, but neither of them actually discovered it. They did discover a different element though, Polonium, which is an example of a related nym<\/em> word. Polonium is a toponym<\/em>. That is to say, something named for a place. In the case of Polonium, it is named after Madame Curie’s beloved native Poland. Yes, many people think of her as French because she took her husband’s surname, but she was very much Polish.<\/p>\n That brings us neatly to another kind of nym<\/em> word, the demonym<\/em>, a name for a demography, or group of people. Most modern demonyms are pretty boring, usually just an -ish<\/em> or an -ian<\/em> ending. For example, two of my demonyms are Flemish and Belgian. I do find some of the Germanic demonyms rather fun, though. Did you know that someone from Luxembourg really is a Luxemburger, or that someone from Frankfurt really is a Frankfurter? But some of the older demonyms are just wonderfully anachronistic. Probably the weirdest of the common European ones is the demonym for people from the Netherlands \u2014 Dutch<\/em>!<\/p>\n Geography brings me to a pair of nym<\/em> words that can get me a little exercised, in the bad way. Geonyms<\/em> are simply names for places, like America<\/em>, Ireland<\/em> or Belgium<\/em>. But, the last of those three is not like the others, because it’s also an exonym<\/em>, a name foreigners give a place. That\u2019s what makes Belgium<\/em> different to America<\/em> and Ireland<\/em> \u2014 Belgium is a name English-speaking outsiders give to a country the locals call by a few different names;Belgi\u00eb<\/em> to the native Flemish speakers like myself, Belgique<\/em> to the French speaking southern Belgians, and Belgien<\/em> to the small community of German-speaking Belgians in the east of the country.<\/p>\n Most exonyms are not contentious, but some can be. For example, it doesn’t bother me at all that my home city, which I call Antwepen<\/em> and the French Belgians call Anvers<\/em>, is known to the English-speaking world by the exonym Antwerp<\/em>. What does make me more than a little cranky is English speakers using French exonyms for decidedly Belgian cities like Brugge. Brugge is the capital of West Flanders. It is now, and has always been, a proudly Flemish city. And yet, English speakers insist on using its French exonym Bruges<\/em>, perpetuating the oppression of the Flemish language by the French-speaking aristocracy that Flemish patriots like my grandfather fought so hard to overcome. What makes the use of Bruges all the more perplexing is that the nearby harbour of Zeebrugge is actually called Zeebrugge by English speakers, rather than the more logical but thankfully fictitious Sea Bruges<\/em>!<\/p>\n
![\"I](\"https:\/\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/anachronym_challenge.png\")
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