Showing respect for people and places by learning names


As a lifetime learner, I'm a big believer in starting learning about something by learning what it's called. And this can often be very difficult.

Just yesterday I learned what the GWR is. It means the "Gilbert Water Ranch" and it a place in Gilbert, Arizona where people who love to watch birds (nowadays called "Birders") love to go. The full name of the place is the Gilbert Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch, so at first I was puzzled as to why it wasn't called GRPWR, but my best guess is that people were used to calling it the Gilbert Water Ranch, and as they got more and more used to it, it just became GWR.

I haven't lived in too many different places in my life, but wherever I've gone I've tried to learn what things are called. To me, it's more than just the beginnings of learning, it shows respect. Names of people and places are very important to people, and in my experience people are happy to help if you let them know that you're kinda new in town.

You could, of course, dig your heels in and argue with people. When I moved to Santa Barbara I spoke enough Spanish that I managed to mispronounce most of the streets. The locals say "Goo-TERRACE" for Gutierrez Street, but I knew some locals who were patient with me. They may have giggled a bit at my inability to pronounce things, but they helped me. My opinion is that it didn't matter what I thought, what mattered is what the people who cared about these places thought. There could have been a street called "Sade" and if it was called "Shar-day", I'd learn it. And as an old Monty Python fan, I know that "Luxury Yacht" is pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".

When I started teaching graphic design, I shared what things were called. Just for fun I'd look up something like "Joint Photographers Expert Group", but I assured my students that they should just say "Jay-peg".

I just took a look at the web page for GWR, and there it says "Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch. I'll think I'll stay with GWR. I'm a local, and I'm a birder.

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more