BERLIN, ORE., STANDS FIRM
Neuberger, Richard L.
Berlin, Ore., Stands Firm By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER OUT IN MY home state, in the rolling hills of Lion County, sprawls the little town of Berlin, Oregon. This nomenclature offended some of the...
...Berlin, Oregon, was to become Distomo, Oregon...
...The ehange would be official...
...I wonder what Gen...
...Dwight D. Lidice or Gen...
...Berlin, Oregon, was not named for the capital of Germany...
...Gen...
...The home-rule protest has prevailed...
...Other plans were made...
...In the Army in Alaska I served with many officers and enlisted men whose names were unquestionably of European origin and background...
...I do not think the doughty General would approve...
...It seems to me that such a situation ought to dispose of the name bugaboo for a long time to come...
...A man named Burl ran a wayside inn on the rough road from Seattle to California...
...Dwight D. Distomo...
...Eisenhower would think if a group of well-wishers, 3,000 miles away decided to change his name, without his permission, to Gen...
...Berlin, Oregon, will remain Berlin, Oregon...
...From this euphony sprang the name of Berlin, Oregon...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower has a definitely German name...
...Burl Inn To Berlin Young people are particularly conscious of the unusual or the foreign-sounding...
...The famous playwright, Maxwell Anderson, prepared the script...
...They even discovered one Kaiser...
...What if all names with Southern connotations had been changed in the North during the Civil War, and all Yankee names likewise in the Southern states ? The name of a man or a town is pretty generally what that man or town makes the name stand for and symbolize...
...Is an effort to be made to change all names symbolic of any country with which we happen.to be at odds...
...It would be so recorded by the Postoffice Department, the Geodetic Survey, and the General Land Office...
...All this, it seems to me, points up an important moral...
...Suddenly the victim protested the burial...
...They considered it pretty presumptuous for a group of people in New York City to change the name of a community in far-off Oregon without so much as a by-your-leave...
...I can recollect no instance in which long names stemming back into Central or Eastern Europe retarded any man's Army career...
...The Congressional Medal of Honor has gone to many soldiers with foreign-sounding names...
...What, they inquired, did the New York nomenclature experts intend to do about these hateful names...
...The business of names is a funny thing...
...A national broadcast was arranged accordingly...
...I wonder if this isn't an attempt to compensate for other shortcomings...
...This nomenclature offended some of the verbal warriors living in New York City, on the other side of the continent, and they decided to rename the Oregon community "Distomo" in tribute to a Greek village wiped out by Nazi barbarians...
...A man can have a German-sounding last name, yet he still can lead the military forces which will conquer German militarism...
...We were at war with Italy only a few months ago...
...This country consists of men and women who have come from every segment of the globe...
...They found that within the boundaries of the United States there are 14 Hamburgs, six Dresdens, three Colognes, two Bremens, 10 Frankfurts, one Munich, two Potsdams, 13 Hanovers, and three Leipsigs...
...Yet I think the Portland Oregonian was right when it said last week, "General Eisenhower is doingall right with the name he bears and so are those American towns, it seems to us, that bear the names of German cities...
...Yet, if we are to start changing German names in America, what about Italian names...
...If they fail in business or lose in politics or at love, they attribute it to their nomenclature...
...It was named Burl Inn...
...The people of Berlin, Oregon, said they had gotten along very well for two or three generations with their town bearing such a name...
...Now if the nomenclature was to be abruptly changed, they wanted something to say about it...
...Surely, Munich, birthplace of Nazism's horrors, was ever more shameful a name to bear than Berlin...
...As President Roosevelt said not so long ago, every single one of us—with the sole exception of North American Indians—is descended from foreigners...
...Many people with long, foreign-sounding names run down to courthouses to change them...
...Other folks blame personal failures on lqng names...
...The Business Of Names The inhabitants of Berlin, Oregon, did a little research...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 44
