COUNTRIES AND INHABITANTS
In most contexts favour simplicity over precision and use Britain rather than Great Britain or the United Kingdom, and America rather than the United States. (“In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.” Dr Johnson.)
Sometimes, however, it may be important to be precise. Remember therefore that Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales, which together with Northern Ireland (which we generally call Ulster, though Ulster strictly includes three counties in Ireland) make up the United Kingdom.
Holland, though a nice, short, familiar name, is strictly only two of the 11 provinces that make up the Netherlands, and the Dutch are increasingly indignant about misuse of the shorter name. So use the Netherlands.
Ireland is simply Ireland. Although it is a republic, it is not the Republic of Ireland. Neither is it, in English, Eire.
Remember too that, although it is usually all right to talk about the inhabitants of the United States as Americans, the term also applies to everyone from Canada to Cape Horn. It may sometimes be necessary to write United States and even United States citizens.
EU can be used, but only after a first mention of the European Union, and then only sparingly. Europe and Europeans may be used as shorthand for citizens of countries of the European Union, but be careful for there are plenty of other Europeans too.
The primary definition of Scandinavia is Norway and Sweden, but it is often used to include Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which, with Finland, make up the Nordic countries.
Where countries have made it clear that they wish to be called by a new (or an old) name, respect their requests. Thus Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, etc, awkward as they are, along with Burkina Faso, Congo, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Zimbabwe, etc.
Former Soviet republics that are now independent countries include:
Belarus (not Belorus or Belorussia), Belarussian
Kazakhstan
Kirgizstan (not Kirgizia or Kyrgyzstan)
Moldova (not Moldavia)
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan (not Turkmenia)
Uzbekistan
FOREIGN NAMES
Arab. Try to leave out the al-. If the name looks odd without it, include it (lower-case, followed by a hyphen). Similarly, Osama bin Laden, and any other Arab names with bin, is Mr bin Laden on second mention. Use Muhammad unless it is part of the name of someone who spells it differently.
Bangladeshi. If the name includes the Islamic definite article, it should be lower-case and without any hyphens: Mujib ur Rahman.
Chinese. In general, follow the Pinyin spelling of Chinese names, which has replaced the old Wade-Giles system, except for people from the past, and people and places outside mainland China. Peking is therefore Beijing and Mao is Zedong, not Tse-tung.
There are no hyphens in Pinyin spelling. So:
Deng Xiaoping
Guangdong (Kwangtung)
Guangzhou (Canton)
Hu Yaobang
Jiang Qing (Mrs Mao)
Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)
Qingdao (Tsingtao)
Tianjin (Tientsin)
Xinjiang (Sinkiang)
Zhao Ziyang
But
Chiang Kai-shek
Hong Kong
Li Ka-shing
Lee Teng-hui
The family name in China comes first, so Deng Xiaoping becomes Mr Deng on a later mention.
Names from Singapore and Vietnam have no hyphens:
Lee Kuan Yew
Ho Chi Minh
Again, the family name comes first.
Dutch. If using first name and surname together, vans and dens are lower case: Dries van Agt and Joop den Uyl. But without their first names they become Mr Van Agt and Mr Den Uyl; Hans van den Broek becomes Mr Van den Broek. These rules do not always apply to Dutch names in Belgium and South Africa; Karel Van Miert, for instance (as well as Mr Van Miert).
French. Any de is likely to be lowercase, unless it starts a sentence. De Gaulle goes up; Charles de Gaulle goes down, or plain de Gaulle, goes down. So does Yves-Thibault de Silguy.
German. Any von is likely to be uppercase only at the start of a sentence.
Italian. Any De is likely to be uppercase, but there are exceptions, so check.
Japanese. Although the Japanese put the family name first in their own language (Koizumi Junichiro), they generally reverse the order in western contexts. So we, too, refer to Junichiro Koizumi.
Korean. South Koreans have changed their convention to Kim Dae-jung. But North Koreans, at least pending unification, have stuck to Kim Jong Il. Kim is the family name.
Pakistani. If the name includes the Islamic definite article ul, it should be lowercase and without any hyphens: Zia ul Haq, Mahbub ul Haq (but Sadruddin, Mohieddin and Saladin are single words).
•Russian. Each of the different approaches to transliterating Russian has its drawbacks. The following rules of thumb are chosen chiefly for reasons of simplicity, not phonetic accuracy.
(i) No y before e: Belarus, perestroika. Exception: if the e starts the word: Yeltsin, Yevgeny.
(ii) Where pronunciation demands it, use y before a at the start of a word, but not at the end. Yavlinsky, Yakovlev, Alia (not Aliya). Chechnya and Niyazov are exceptions.
(iii) Anything pronounced yo is usually spelled e: Fedorov, Gorbachev.
(iv) With words ending -ski, -skii or -sky, choose -sky. But with all other words ending -i, -ii or -y, choose -i. Thus: Zhirinovsky and Tchaikovsky, but Bolshoi, Rutskoi, Yuri. Exceptions: Grigory (because of the association with Gregory), Nizhni Novgorod.
Replace dzh with j. So: Jokar (Dudaev), Jaba (Iosseliani).
•Ukranian. Ukrainians are engaged in an orgy of retransliterating Russian versions of their words, often several times. It is impossible to keep up, so go for the familiar, if there is one.
One generalisation: Ukrainian has no g, so it is Yevhen (not Yevgeny), Ihor (not Igor) and Luhansk (not Lugansk). The currency is the hryvnia.
ETHNIC GROUPS
Avoid giving offence. This should be your first concern. But also avoid mealy-mouthed euphemisms and terms that have not generally caught on despite promotion by pressure-groups. If and when it becomes plain that American blacks no longer wish to be called black, as some years ago it became plain that they no longer wished to be called coloured, then call them African-American (or whatever). Till then they are blacks.
When writing about Spanish-speaking people in the United States, use either Latino or Hispanic as a general term, but try to be specific (eg, Mexican-American).
Africans may be black or white. If you mean blacks, write blacks.
People of mixed race in South Africa are Coloureds.
The inhabitants of Azerbaijan are Azerbaijanis, some of whom, but not all, are Azeris. Those Azeris who live in other places, such as Iran, are not Azerbaijanis. Similarly, many Croats are not Croatian, and many Serbs not Serbian.
Anglo-Saxon is not a synonym for English-speaking.
The language spoken in Iran (and Tajikistan) is Persian, not Farsi. Flemings speak Dutch.
ANIMALS, PLANTS, ETC
When it is necessary to use a Latin name, follow the standard practice. Thus for all creatures higher than viruses, write the binomial name in italics, giving an initial capital to the first word (the genus): Turdus turdus, the song thrush; Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood; Culicoides clintoni, a species of midge. This rule also applies to Homo sapiens and to such cod uses as Homo economicus. On second mention, abbreviate the genus (T. turdus). In some species, such as dinosaurs, the genus alone is used in lieu of a common name: Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus. Also Drosophila, a frutifly favoured by geneticists. But Escherichia coli, a bacerium also favoured by geneticists, is known universally as E. coli, even on first mention.
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