Ukraine/The Ukraine

[Jules Levin]

On 19.06.2014 13:04, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> R. M. Cleminson wrote:
>
>> No, the BBC has said Beijing for years.
>
> I expect they still say "Peking duck," though...

Don't know about BBC and Peking, but apparently the GB Foreign Office 
continued to use Constantinople  long after the name was changed to 
Istanbul, and supposedly informed the Turks that the English name would 
be kept, whatever the Turks call it.  Cf. our Venice for Venezzia, 
Florence for Firenza, Vienna for Wien.   Countries that are confident in 
their own identity would never think of advising speakers of other 
languages how to refer to their country.  Ukrainians should think about 
that.

JL  [forgive any Italian spelling errors--all from memory.]
PS Add to the list of countries with articles I mentioned in the 
previous email, The United States of America, which I believe GB still 
treats as a grammatical plural, unlike our singular.






>
> And of course "Peiping Tom," not "Beijing Tom." ;-)
>

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