Madam, - According to Jim Duffy (Opinion July 30th), the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs needs to learn some lessons from history. We are told he has issued a "diktat" informing the local residents that they cannot call their town Dingle and that this "top-down" approach has backfired disastrously in the past.
Are we to infer that our English conquerors successfully changed An Daingean to Dingle by using a "bottom-up" approach, gently persuading the inhabitants of the benefits of an Anglophone future? Given his particular family background, Mr Éamon Ó Cuív needs no lessons in Irish language history from Jim Duffy. As a democratically elected Minister of this State, he issues no diktats either.
I hope that the people of An Daingean/Dingle decide themselves, by way of plebiscite, how they wish their place to be named. And history teaches is that this would be the first time they would be so consulted. - Is mise,
PÁID Ó DONNCHÚ,
Na Forbacha,
An Spidéal,
Co na Gaillimhe.
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Madam, - The attitude of The Irish Times to placename change is interesting. Today you carry several news items referring to a place called Dingle, though such a place no longer officially exists. You reported on floods in Bombay, although the name has been changed to Mumbai for many years. Other names such as Beiging, Belarus or Moldova seem to present no problem. Many placenames around the world are changed from time to time. Why is your paper selective in its adoption of new versions? - Yours, etc,
M.A. MACNAMARA,
Newgarden,
Castleconnell,
Co Limerick.