A 21:42 2002-02-24 -0800, Doug Ewell a écrit :
>The problem with the Romania alpha-3 change is that here is a country that
>not changed its name, its system of government, its political status, or
>its boundaries. All we know is that the change from ROM to ROU was made
>"following a request of the Government of Romania." We are told nothing
>about the nature of the request or its rationale. Indeed, the only
>immediately obvious advantage of ROU is that it provides a better mnemonic
>code for the *French* name of the country, "Roumanie." (The Romanian word
>for Romania is "Romania.")
[Alain] I may risk a bold explanation since you talk about French.
ROM may perhaps suggest the French term "romanichel" which means
"gipsy" (25% of Romanians fluently speak French, and a lot of others have a
certain understanding of it). As a good deal of gipsies come from this area
(but not exclusively from Romania [or Rumania]), perhaps the R[o|u]manians
are embarrassed. Who knows? What is the word for "gipsy" in Romanian? How
is « Romania » pronounced in Romanian?
In TIME magazine, some years ago, did I dream when I also saw that they
wanted their country to be called Rumania rather than Romania in English
(or is it the other way around -- I maybe mixed up with this)? In French it
is « Roumanie » already indeed and in German « Rumänien » (a lot of
Romanians speak German too -- their language is perhaps midway between
German and French too -- to me Romanian seems to have a story similar to
French, it is originally Latin spoken by Germanic people [in the case of
Romania, by Germanic mercenaries, a long time ago]).
Alain LaBonté
Québec
