694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



board is to make no changes unless a decided improvement can 

 be secured thereby. Its first principle is that the spelling and 

 pronunciation which are sanctioned by local usage should be 

 adopted in general. Even where the present name is a changed 

 or corrupted one, if it has become firmly established the board 

 keeps its hands off. But where a choice is offered between two 

 or more names for the same locality, all sanctioned by local 

 usage, the opportunity to secure the most appropriate and eupho- 

 nious one is improved. The possessive form of names is discarded 

 wherever practicable, sometimes by dropping both the (') and the 

 s, for instance changing Qedney's to Oedney Channel, in New 

 York Harbor, and in cases where so much change has not seemed 

 advisable, simply omitting the ('). By the latter procedure, which 

 is practically changing to the plural form, Minot's Ledge, in 

 Boston Harbor, becomes Minots Ledge. The final h is dropped 

 from names ending in -burgh, and the ending -borough is shortened 

 to boro. The spelling center is always used rather than centre. 

 The board discourages the use of diacritic marks over letters, and 

 hyphens between parts of names ; where a name consists of more 

 than one word it prefers to combine the parts into one. The use 

 of the words City, Town, and Court House (abbreviated C. H.) as 

 parts of place-names is deemed undesirable. 



The first report of the board has been issued recently and con- 

 tains a list of decisions made during the year which it covers. 

 More than two thousand questions have been submitted to the 

 board, and decisions have been given upon nearly all of them. 

 Early in the year it was called upon to decide concerning several 

 hundred names in Alaska, where the utmost confusion exists con- 

 cerning geographic nomenclature. To the difficulty of translit- 

 erating Russian and Indian words into English letters is added the 

 confusion caused by the fact that expedition after expedition, ex- 

 ploring this region, has assigned new names to the geographic 

 features of the country, ignoring those already given. This state 

 of affairs has induced the board to undertake a complete revision 

 of Alaskan names, the result of which will be a geographical dic- 

 tionary of the Territory. One of the three bulletins issued during 

 the year contained a list of between five and six hundred decisions 

 rendered at the instance of the Lighthouse Board, and fully a 

 thousand questions were answered for the Census Office. The 

 names of all the counties in the United States have been passed 

 upon, and the approved list appears in the report. 



Among the United States names that have been revised are : 

 Bering (Sea and Strait), in place of Behring, the h being a German 

 addition to the original Danish name: Fort Monroe, this, not 

 Fortress Monroe, being the name given to the works at Old Point 

 Comfort by the Secretary of War in 1828 ; Pedee, for the river 



