Mags GarganPlace names are so central to issues of identity and rejection that they cause trouble all around the world
Here in Ireland, we are familiar with controversies over place names. In the 1920s there was a trend towards renaming Irish towns with their older Gaelic names. Of these changes perhaps only Cobh for the Cove of Cork has stuck fast. Navan is once again Navan, Bagnelstown, Bagnelstown.
Yet we have seen more recently just how heated the conversation (to use the now modish term for debate) was down in Kerry over the right name for Dingle. Oddly the earliest English name for the place had been Dingle-I-Cosh, which might well have been retained.
However, our controversies are a small affair compared with some recently in Europe. In Spain there is a little village near Burgos called Castrillo MatajudÌos, which was sometimes translated as ìKill the Jewsî.
In May this year, 52 of the 56 inhabitants voted to change the name, which had been applied to the commune through an error of translation. In 1035, the Jews, who were being threatened with expulsion ñ they were finally expelled in 1492 by their Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella ñ sought refuge on a hillside near the village.
As a result the place became known as Motajudios, which is to say ìthe Hill of the Jewsî. An error in translation later led to mota becoming mata, so hill was transformed into kill.
Pogroms
In France the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has called on the interior minister to change the name of a small village in the department of Loiret. The place is called La Mort-aux-Juifs. They claim that the name goes back to the era of the pogroms which began in the 11th Century, at the time of the Crusades, and concluded with the expulsion of 110,000 Jews from France ordered by Philippe le Bel in 1306.
However, local people say this is not true. They claim that actually the name dates from about 1400 or so. The principal estate of the area had to be reached by a road on which a toll was payable. This was resented by travellers who nicknamed the people who levied the toll ìJewsî for their avarice.
In reporting this recently, the French paper Le Figaro commented that, though this was ìan explanation from distant history, it was not itself without a hint of anti-Semitismî.
But these controversies have another aspect in these days of resurgent Islam. In the Spanish province of Estremadura, there is a place called Valle de Matamoros, which recalls the war-cry of Catholic Spain to ìKill the Moorsî. Yet here no one is calling for a change of name.
In Mexico, on the border with the United States, there is a town called Matamoros also. But this town of refuge has no plans to change its name, which dates from 1826, and recalls, not the struggle to drive out the Moors from Spain, but a great hero of the Mexican War of Independence to drive out the Spanish, General Marciano Matamoros.
Dubious
However, changing names is a dubious practice. One can change the name. One cannot change the facts of history. In Russia, the change of name of Leningrad to St Petersburg was not so much a change as a restoration. But recalling that beneficent tyrant Peter the Great, not apparently a pleasant man in some respects, is very much in keeping with the outlook of Putinís Russia.
Even worse perhaps is the current attempt of the Islamic State movement to wipe out the names of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, often seen as an outcome of colonial manipulations by the French and British in the 1920s and substitute the caliphate.
In India, there is a well-established policy of restoring names to cities ñ Pune for the Anglo-British Poona, Mumbai for Bombay. Alas, I belong to a generation that has to struggle to keep in mind that the ancient state of Burma is now called Myanmar.
Though the true first names of all places are lost in history, place names are so central to issues of identity and rejection that they cause trouble all around the world, even at the North Pole where Inuit names are now being substituted for the familiar names put on places by explorers and settlers. It is unlikely that we shall see an end to place name controversies any time soon.