Re: why must Debian call Taiwan a "Province of China"?
claus@xn--frber-gra.muc.de (Claus Färber) writes:
> BTW, there are a lot of other names from ISO 3166 that IMO should be
> changed for everyday use:
>
> Short name contains unnecessary parts from the full official name
> (probably for political hyper-correctness):
>
> IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF;IR => IRAN
> LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC;LA => LAOS
> MICRONESIA, FEDERATED STATES OF;FM => MICRONESIA
> MOLDOVA, REPUBLIC OF;MD => MOLDOVA
> TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF;TZ => TANZANIA
In all of these cases, a consistent form is followed: The part after the
comma forms a proper prefix of the `common' name, and when used gives you
the country's self-declared official name; taking the part before the comma
gives you the common name[1]. This makes automatic processing easy. Removing
the part after the comma from the database for the above countries yields
no benefit.
It's only Taiwan that's weird, because (1) the resulting long name isn't
a real name at all, but the rather awkward construct: "Province of
China Taiwan" and obviously (2) that isn't the self-declared name of the
country[2].
> A different short name is more common (again, the UN name was probably
> chosen for political correctness):
>
> KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF;KP => KOREA, NORTH
> KOREA, REPUBLIC OF;KR => KOREA, SOUTH
These names are[3] those chosen by the respective countries -- _that_ is
something I thing ought to be respected (so if Taiwan were to suddenly
start calling itself [in English] `Province of China Taiwan', well then
the argument is over I guess :-).
[1] The exceptions seem to be Laos, where the most common english name used
isn't present, and perhaps North/South Korea, as discussed above.
[2] Which as far as I can figure is "Republic of China (Taiwan)"; I'm not
sure how one would actually fit this into the comma-separated-prefix
scheme... :-/
[3] Again, as far as I can figure
-Miles
--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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