Well no actually, they didn't change the name of Peking, or Canton, Hong Kong, Tibet or China for that matter. But rather than get into the technicalities of the romanisation of Chinese place names, the replacement of Wade-Giles by Pinyin, I've taken to saying...
"Well, when I'm speaking Chinese, I do say Beijing, but when I'm speaking English I say Peking. Just as I say Roma when I speak Italian, and Rome when I speak English". Whooshka! what a piece of one-sy up-sy that is, non?
Want the technicalities? It was 1979 when China announced that it was going to use the Pinyin system to transliterate its names into English -- or indeed into any language using the English alphabet. This was to replace the Wade-Giles system that had been used up to that time. I happened to be on the China desk in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs at the time, and as a junior officer who had just completed two years of Mandarin language training in China, I was asked to draft a "policy" on the change. The policy I drafted, and which was subsequently adopted by the Department at the time was that we would use the Pinyin system for all but the most common place names, names for which usage dictated "English" equivalents already existed. These included, as I recall: Peking, Canton, Hong Kong, Tibet and China. The Pinyin system is, by the way, a much superior system of romanisation; it's easy to learn -- one can do it in a day -- and gives a very accurate rendition of Mandarin pronunciation. The snipped above means "I don't know" or "I'm not sure", but I'm sure about this. (Just as I'm sure that there is not -- and cannot be -- a similarly accurate system of romanising Cantonese).
At the time there was a rash of political correctness, especially in the leftist Australian press (the Nation Review I think was one), which took up Pinyin names for all names in Chinese, so that we saw such idiocy, incomprehensible to many of their readers, such as "Xiang Gang" (for Hong Kong), "Xizang" (for Tibet) and even "Zhongguo" (for China). Fortunately this did not last long. But for some reason, "Beijing" became the new English word. Annoyingly, though, for those of us who do speak Chinese, the pronunciation tends to be "Beizhing", rather than the correct "Beijing" with the jing like the jing in "jingle bells".
The DFA over the years has fallen in with the "Beijing" usage, I'm sad to say, though there are some stalwarts, myself amongst them, who continue to use Peking, the extant English word for the Chinese capital.
Interestingly, the Chinese don't give two hoots if their English speakers use "Beijing" or "Peking". In fact, if it is pronounced "Beizhhing", as many well-meaning people do, the mispronunciation is often not understood. "Oh, you mean Peking", they will say to their English-speaking interlocutor.
This was all brought to mind by Charles Moore's "Spectator's Notes", of 12 June:
"One of my dinner companions was a young businesswoman and philanthropist who told me she was from Bombay. I remarked that she didn't call it Mumbai. 'Oh no,' she said, 'no Indian does. It is a word used only in conversation with foreigners.' She confirmed that the switch of official name from Bombay to Mumbai was the result of anti-Muslim Hindu agitation in the 1980s led by the charismatic Balasaheb Thackeray. Thackeray's sectarian Mumbai-Jumbo led to a rash of these name-changes -- Madras becoming Chennai, Calcutta being re-spelt to sound less English -- ignored by most Indians, but uncritically accepted by the outside world".
So, in case I be criticised for being an "Islamophobe" for going along with Muslim-bashing Hindus, I herewith resolve to talk of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. And Peking, of course.
Oh, and I've taken to saying "tomayto". It makes one more readily understood in these parts....
