Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-02
MAP OF EUROPE
IN 46 LANGUAGES
Official Spelling of Places Diff
ficuIt, Geographic Society
Bulletin Shows.

The National Geographic Society has
Just issued a new map of Europe in AZ
languages.
The IS languages were required tC
give the precise official spellings Of the
place names in countries where the
places exist.
In the years following the armistiee
one of the notable changes that has
taken place in Europe has been the de-
velopment & Id intensiflcation of ma
tional feeling with respect to geograph-
ical place names.
warsaw is WarSZawa to the Poles q;
pre-war Reval has been replaced by
Tallinn. in EStonia; ST. Petersburg was
transformed to Petrograd, but now is
Leningrad. So with hundreds of the
names which, like the places they rep
resent, have endured for centuries.
One practical reason for the society S
preparation of the new map is the in
creasing difficulty European travellers
find in identifying the names of towns
as they are spelled on time tables or
known to ticket agents, spellings that
often are at wide variance with the
names we have been using.
Brussels Is BruxeIIes.
The traveller soon finds that Brussels,
In Belgium, is Bruxelles; that Copen-
hagen is KobenhaVn; that Vienna is
Vein and ConStantinople Is IStanbul.
Another reason is the growing CORE
spondence of American firms and indi-
viduals with Europeans. DR.. Gilbert
Grosvenor, president of the National
Geographic Society, in summarizing the
map changes, writes:
Every person expects others to spell
his or her name as he or she spells it,
wherever he or she may happen to be-
Courtesy and custom will soon require
that when we write to our friends in
Europe We spell the names of their cities
as these names are spelled at home.
THE National Geographic Society has
$4,000 members in Europe. Commune
cations coming to these members from
the National Geographic Society adj
dressed to Rome (Roma), Venice (Vene-
Zia). etc, would probably seem to them
as illiterate as We regard letters coming
to us addressed to Nuova York, Fila
DELTA, Balzseestadt (Salt Lake City, or
Washington, which is the manner the
names Of a few Of our cities are spelled
In some European gazetteerS.
''Foreseeirg the ultimate desirability
Of according to each nation recogni-
ton of its own approved geographic
names within its boundaries, the Ma
tional Geographic Society three years
ago began to assemble the data for and
to construct the present new map Of
Europe.
Many of the names on our map will
have an unfamiliar appearance to the
average user, and yet these are the
place names to which letters should be
addressed. They are the names which
the traveller abroad will find on his
time tables OF the various countries.
and they are the names which will
greet his eye as his train or boat or air
plane passes station, dock or landing
field.
Cooperation Of Many Sources.
''In compiling material for this map
che National Geographic Society has
had courteous cooperation from many
sources. Without exception, embassy
and legation officials of every European
country represented in the National
Capital have assisted the society in OBJ
tanning their most recent authoritative
national maps.
In addition geographical societies
abroad have been consulted and have
given valuable suggestions as to the
choice of place names to be shown in
After the World War the official
German, Acknowledgements and Rus
sian languages were banished from the
newborn states of Central Europe, with
the result that Estonian, Lettish. Lith-
uanian, Polish, Czechoslovak and Serbo-
Croatian came into their own as on
cial languages.
THE Turkish portion Of the map had
been completed when news came from
the societys European staff representa-
tive In ConStanttnople that the new
alphabet would be adopted. This en-
tire section of the map had to be re-
lettered."
The map is in six colors, is drawn on
the convenient scale of / to 5000 900
CAT miles to the inch), and has more
than 5000 place names.