Posted by Adam Quinan on June 28, 2006 at 03:16:40 from 72.136.51.111 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Source posted by John on June 28, 2006 at 01:29:45:
Granted that there are bodies which attempt to regulate names, some more successfully than others, the IAU is pretty good keeping stars and planets under control.
People can choose to change their own names and in some jurisdictions al that is required is a simple statement.
Historically people spelled words any damn way they chose. Under the influence of such early pioneers as Dictionary Johnson, some form of standardisations started creeping in. However, when a new word was required there was a state of flux until people settled on the "official" version. Similarly, the discovery of places previously unknown to English speakers required someone to give them a name. These places were usually named after the name in the local language, some were not, either because there was no known name or for prestige purposes (Rhodesia). When English people hear a foreign word and try and reproduce the sound in English, various factors affect the result. So if you read a 100 year old book about India, the place names are often spelled very differently from the way they are today (Poona for Pune), but phonetically they usually sound similar. Again a process of fixing on an official spelling has to be undergone. Political considerations also arise, Calcutta was basically founded by the Job Charnock of the East India Company and he spelled it Calcutta, a few years ago the Bengal government decreed that it should be spelled Kolkata, which is correct? The name has been changed.