Retroactive Name Changing

As I was passing through Starke (about 25 miles northeast of Gainesville) this morning on my way to pick up my son in Jacksonville for a Gainesville visit this Labor Day weekend, I looked over at the southbound side of US 301. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic, most of which I'm sure was destined for the University of Florida's season-opening home football game against Miami University (of Ohio), to begin at noon. I had planned my trip so that I would be driving against this flow. By the time we're on our way back, we should be pretty clear of extraneous traffic (I'm writing this just outside of Jacksonville).

Although you may think from the first paragraph that this article is about traffic and football, it is neither. Rather I was intrigued by the way that, when referring to Miami University, it almost always bears that parenthetic tag "of Ohio" dragging along behind it. This is, of course, to prevent any confusion between it and the University of Miami (which oddly never seems to need the tag "of Florida"). I'm sure that in the past, Miami University didn't have to be distinguished this way. And I think about other "modified" names as well.

Remember George Bush, our 41st president? Nobody ever referred to him as "George H.W. Bush" until his begotten namesake-with-a-dubya became president. Now, when discussing his record, it's "George H.W. Bush did this", "George H.W. Bush did that".

After being prodded by an influential producer/record manager, John Mellencamp originally launched his recording career under the name "Johnny Cougar". He later had misgivings and briefly changed to "John Cougar Mellencamp" before finally dropping "Cougar" altogether. But when discussing his early hits like Hurts So Good or Jack and Diane, it's now always "John Mellencamp" as the artist who recorded them, not "Johnny Cougar".

Or take how we have been designating our years. Charles Osgood notwithstanding, there has been the greatest resistance to referring to years in the 2000's according to the previous centuries' custom like, for example, "nineteen o-three" or "fourteen ninety-two". Instead of "the twenty-o-four election", it's "the two thousand and four election". But now we're starting to go back to form and say "twenty-ten" for 2010. So what, you say? Just that I wonder whether at some point in the future, when referring back to 2004, those looking back won't just refer to it as "twenty-o-four", something that almost no one (except of course Osgood) used to say.

I wonder what people, places, or anything else with which we are currently comfortable naming a certain way will end up bearing a modified designation, a modification that will be retroactively applied.

Perhaps you may think that I am nitpicking a little with this, but I don't think so. Of course, Miami U, Poppy Bush, John(ny) {(Cougar)[Mellencamp]}, and 2004 are all, in essence, the same regardless of how they were designated at different times. So are Beijing (formerly Peking, even more formerly Peiping), Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and Mumbai (formerly Bombay). But if you're going to go back and try to recreate a scenario from the past, you better get in line with the "old" way of naming things!