Thursday 13 January 2011

What's in a name?


A common road sign maybe?
Brief explanation of the name of the blog (pretentious, moi...?!):

The official name of the country where I'm going is   "Lao People's Democratic Republic", or Lao PDR for short, but it's mainly known abroad as "Laos" (and often pronounced with the "s").   Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge) reliably informs me this is because the French added the final consonant to signify their unification of the multiple Lao kingdoms of French Indochina in 1893 - good pub quiz knowledge if nothing else!  

History lessons aside, back in the day between the 14th and 18th centuries the region was known as the kingdom of Lan Xang - the Land of a Million Elephants - and hence the blog title.   Hopefully Laos will live up to its namesake and I'll get to see at least a few.....


No comments:

Post a Comment