Is the UN-official Spanish name for Trinidad and Tobago really Trinidad y Tabago?

[NilsEnevoldsen]

Not an issue, just a request for feedback.

Is the UN-official Spanish name for Trinidad and Tobago really Trinidad y Tabago? It's given as such here, and it's in my latest pull request under the assumption that it's genuine. It does appear to be a real variant, but a rare one. For example, it's not mentioned at https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_y_Tobago. However, it is about twice as frequent as Trinidad y Tobago on un.org.

Out of curiousity, if Trinidad y Tabago is correct, does anyone know why it was chosen?

[NilsEnevoldsen]

This person shares my confusion: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discusión:Trinidad_y_Tobago#Tobago_o_Tabago

[NilsEnevoldsen]

These appear to be the most official current documents.

UNGEGN List of Country Names (E/CONF.105/13/CRP.13) UNGEGN List of Country Names (GEGN.2/2021/CRP.130/Rev.1)

I have emailed the chair of the working group to ask if it is an error.

[vincentarelbundock]

That’s interesting. For what it’s worth, this seems to be the Unicode CLDR name:

library(countrycode)

countrycode("Trinidad and Tobago", "country.name", "cldr.short.es")
#> [1] "Trinidad y Tobago"

[NilsEnevoldsen]

I actually just received a reply.

Thank you for bringing my attention to this question, which really looks like a mistake.

I will check this and make an appropriate decision if we find an official basis to do so.

[vincentarelbundock]

ha! that's kind of cool

[NilsEnevoldsen]

I'll call this closed with 2168ec9c7d8f241496155268d08587f8de3bc8eb. If we learn anything surprising we can reopen.

[NilsEnevoldsen]

I have learned something surprising, and am reopening.

Correspondence with names redacted:

After a long inquiry, we've finally found the expert who knew the answer to your question: my French colleague __ __.

In short, the name used in Spain is "Trinidad y Tobago", but the Spanish name for UN use, officially stated by the country itself (whose official language is English), is really "Trinidad y Tabago".

Indeed, under British rule, the name of the island was Tobago or Tabago, and this "name, given by Christopher Columbus, came from the Haitian "tambaku" ("pipe") because of the habit that the inhabitants had of inhaling by mouth the products resulting from the combustion of tobacco leaves (Cherpillod, etymological dictionary of geographical names, 1991)."

My reply:

Wow! This is indeed surprising, given how rarely that form is used. Thanks to __ __ for finding this.

If I might make one further inquiry: in what manner and when was the Spanish name “officially stated by the country itself”. Is this official statement in a public document? In a private document? In meeting notes?

I was answered:

In principle, the names are declared to the United Nations Protocol and Liaison Service by the Permanent Mission of the requesting country, as in the attached document. [The attachment was for Czechia.]

For the case that interests you, it seems to me that you should ask the United Nations archives.

For my part, I had taken notes in a small committee meeting: my boss, __ __, and I were in contact with Mr. Nigel Kasser and his linguistic secretary (in charge of the list of country names) who had given the information... the documents were not yet digitized.

[vincentarelbundock]

This is fascinating. It's amazing what info we can get by "just asking." Good stuff, thanks for sharing!

[vincentarelbundock]

Was reviewing this, and I get a sense that there is no action to take here. Correct? Can close?

[NilsEnevoldsen]

Not at a computer, but I think 2168ec9c7d8f241496155268d08587f8de3bc8eb hasn't been reverted yet. I was hoping to get confirmation from T&T before I did that, but I've received no response. Thus we should assume the UN is correct and revert to "Tabago".

[vincentarelbundock]

Got it, thanks! I commented out the lines where we changed it manually, but have been unable to re-run the get_un_names.R script because of this issue: https://github.com/vincentarelbundock/countrycode/issues/312

[vincentarelbundock]

Reverted and tested here: a5d98a76b74688a5390698a8743131c1b96b13d