On 5/22/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sounds like the kind of chauvinistic demands that the Greeks put on Macedonia.
Similar only in that it involves two places using the same name, and some degree of nationalistic pride no doubt.
However, the Wikipedia Georgia vs. Georgia squabble differs quite substantially from the Macedonia vs. Macedonia one. For one thing, I've never heard anyone claim that either should not be named Georgia. They did not arrive at their names through a common source, either; the state after a British king, while the nation and former SSR seems to have acquired the name through a mangling of a Greek name for part of its territory into English, according to the Wikipedia article.
Another factor seems to be that few taking sides or weighing in on this, in all the half-dozen at least times that I've seen this argument come up, are actually residents of either geographical entity. I am not a Georgian in either sense, being a British citizen living in the United States, and I don't think many of the others who've ever argued about this have been either.
It's in the end a disagreement about the natural ordering of things in an encyclopedia context, and does not involve national pride for many participants - although it's arguable that regional bias or simply an wherever-centric point of view are in play as well.
-Matt