CHOOSING A CITY NAME CAN BE A MAJOR OFFENSE
By Matthew Collin

Moscow Times
Jan 18 2010
Russia

The other day I tried to phone someone in Shusha, a small town in the
disputed Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Or at least I thought
that I did. But an Armenian friend insisted that I’d made a mistake:
"You got it wrong," he declared indignantly. "Shusha is what the
Azeris call it. But it’s an Armenian town. It’s called Shushi."

Shusha or Shushi — depending on your point of view — was one of
the most hard-fought battlegrounds during the war between Armenian
and Azeri forces for control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s. The
Armenians won, and the entire Azeri population fled, hence road
signs in the area now refer to the town as Shushi. On the ground,
at least, the winners get to choose. But because Nagorno-Karabakh is
still internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, many foreign
maps continue to refer to it as Shusha.

To outsiders, the difference may appear petty. But arguments about
what places should be called are another indication of how hard it
is to resolve the territorial conflicts in the Caucasus. Fiercely
held differences over terminology reflect the intractability
with which positions are held, and language is regularly used as
a political weapon. Last year, missions from the United Nations
and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the
disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were shut down when
Russia refused to allow them to continue if they retained the word
"Georgia" in their titles. The two regions, the Kremlin argued,
are no longer part of Georgia.

Of course, some place names have changed over time to reflect altered
circumstances — particularly when territories have been conquered
or annexed. Since Georgia lost control of Abkhazia, the capital has
been referred to locally as "Sukhum," although Georgians still call
it Sukhumi. But centuries earlier, when the Greeks were the dominant
force in the region, Sukhumi was known as Dioskurias, then Sebastopolis
under the Roman Empire and later Sukhum-Kaleh under the Ottoman Turks.

For a foreign correspondent covering the Caucasus, language is a
constant hazard, and the decision to use one name or phrase rather
than another can lead to allegations that a reporter is taking sides.

But in a place where history is endlessly disputable, even the most
careful choice of words is almost guaranteed to offend someone.

Matthew Collin is a journalist based in Tbilisi.