Thanks, Ed, for calling attention to a common, but often overlooked, problem that people may encounter when searching by name for geographical locations in databases, maps, or other materials prepared by government agencies or other organizations with a fear of offending anyone with political influence. For many years, bureaucrats have been quietly renaming or deleting "politically incorrect" names of locally known geographical features on maps and other documents. Consequently, traditional names used in old documents, and which might still be used by local people, sometimes can be difficult or impossible to find in more recent materials.
Awareness of this "politically correct" editing practice can be helpful if you ever encounter it while searching for geographical features. Ed pointed out some interesting examples of how this process appears to have been applied to a USGS web site to make place names less offensive to current racial sensitivities. Similar censorship of place names has been practiced by map makers for many years, often for reasons that have nothing to do with race. When I was a teenager (long long ago), I was amused to find a couple of very small towns with unusual names on a Mississippi state highway map. One town was named "Intercourse", and the other, a short distance away, was named "Whynot". You can imagine why this would attract the attention of a teenage boy and would spark some imaginative speculation about how the towns got their names. ;-) Two other nearby towns were named "Increase" and "Energy". Several years later, I was unable to find these names on newer Mississippi highway maps. A number of years later, I saw a television interview with a government map maker (probably from USGS), who talked about how they often had to "clean up" potentially offensive location names before printing government maps. There were many traditional names that he could not mention on television, but he did discuss some of the milder examples, including how a place called "Whorehouse Ridge" was renamed "Naughty Girl Ridge" by map makers who thought the real name was too risqu� for government publication. Similarly, the name "Intercourse" was once popular among small towns wishing to express optimism about their future growth and prosperity, but this name tended to disappear subsequently, as the word became more strongly associated with sexual activity. Editing for "political correctness" is not nearly as common among cavers as it is among government bureaucrats, but if you look hard enough, you'll probably even find a few examples in cave maps and caving publications. Rod To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to mailto:[email protected] with the following message--unsubscribe cavetex. For help and information go to www.cavetex.net. List administrator: mailto:[email protected]
