Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

BRAZIL: Changing a City Name to Facilitate Web Searches

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 16 2005 (IPS) - “It’s like advertising one product and selling another,” Brazilian city councillor Djalma Pastorello summed up in favour of his proposal to change the name of his city, Foz do Iguaçu, so as not to confuse people searching for it on the Internet.

The Social Democratic councillor is convinced that as “Foz do Iguassu” – replacing the “ç” with a double s – his town would attract many more tourists, and overcome a problem that militates against spreading the word about its magnificent local beauty spots. The falls on the river that gives the city its name, for example, include 275 waterfalls extending into Brazilian and Argentine territory.

Since website names do not accept letters with a cedilla – a hook under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify pronunciation – the town’s online address is http://www.fozdoiguacu.pr.gov.br.

In a search for “Iguassu”, a name used by several private English-language websites – English being the dominant language on the Internet – 30 percent of the results mistakenly flag Puerto Iguazú, the neighbouring Argentine town, he pointed out.

Because of this, Pastorello has submitted a draft law to change the official name of the city, replacing the “ç” with “ss”. The city council approved the law on Oct. 19 by eight votes to four; two councillors were absent. However, the measure has provoked a strong negative reaction from local institutions and residents.

Mayor Paulo Mac Donald Ghisi then decided to hold a “popular consultation”, a kind of informal referendum with voting in schools, on the sidewalks, and at other public places. Eighty-nine percent of the 3,000 people who had voted up to Nov. 8 wanted to retain the “ç.”


Pastorello told IPS that this is a manoeuvre that the mayor is using to justify his likely veto of the draft law, although the city council could overrule the veto.

“We want to schedule the modification (of the name) for Jun. 10, the city’s anniversary,” he added.

According to Pastorello, his proposal is basically about “rescuing the historic name used when the city was founded in 1914.” Iguassu was changed to Iguaçu in the 1940s, in fulfilment of an agreement between the Brazilian and Portuguese Academies of Letters, which established Portuguese spelling using ç and j for words originating from indigenous languages, which had previously been written with double s and g.

Iguaçú, or Iguazú as it is spelled in Spanish, is of Tupi-Guarani origin. This is the main indigenous language in Brazil and Paraguay, and is also spoken in Argentina and Bolivia. The meaning of Iguaçu in the original language is “great water.”

But the linguistic agreement should not have altered proper names such as place names, said Pastorello, who also noted that the state of Sergipe in northeastern Brazil, and some cities like Pirassununga (“where the fish make a noise,” in Tupi-Guarani), kept their old spelling.

“I am against the change on cultural grounds, as a matter of national identity,” linguist Edna Camille, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, declared to IPS.

“It is important to keep in touch with one’s origins when technological changes cause us to lose so much, like the music recorded on old albums which cannot be listened to any more, because record players have disappeared and the record companies have no commercial incentive to re-record them in digital format,” she argued.

“And what would happen to the historical record, the literature, the books printed with the word Iguaçu?” she asked.

Pastorello explained that there would be no problem since the law is not retroactive, which means that nothing in the past would be altered. Only new documents, vehicle number plates and texts would adopt the new spelling, which would be phased in gradually. What would happen is that there would be two place names, separated in time by a date.

But those opposed to the change, like Luiz Eduardo Cheida, the environment secretary for the state of Parana, where Foz do Iguaçu is located, see yet another possible confusion that would also have a negative effect on tourism. That is because other geographical features, like the river and the waterfalls, would continue to be called Iguaçu, since the city council has no power to change those names.

All this debate is unnecessary, because the Internet itself already provides the solution, according to Carlos Afonso, an activist. The system already recognises the cedilla, and domain names with ç are accepted in Brazil, explained Afonso, an information technology expert who forms part of the Brazilian Internet management committee, where he represents civil society,

Thus, the mayor’s office has the right to register both Foz do Iguaçu and Foz do Iguazú as its Internet domain names, with the suffix .gov.br. Access would be possible using either domain name, as well as by entering Iguacu without the cedilla, as at present, Afonso told IPS.

Nevertheless, the cedilla remains an obstacle on the Internet. Many French websites are also identified by incomplete names: even the French Academy (http://www.academie-francaise.fr) is registered without its proper cedilla or accent.

Of the 191 countries that belong to the United Nations, 146 do not use the cedilla in their national languages, Pastorello observed.

Foz do Iguaçu, a town of approximately 300,000 located on the Triple Frontier with Argentina and Paraguay, is sixth in rank among Brazilian cities for the number of tourists it attracts: close to one million per year. It is vital to increase the influx of tourists in order to overcome the social crisis that the town is experiencing, with more than 20,000 people unemployed, the city councillor said.

The local economy is dependent on tourism, having experienced the cyclical rise and fall of maté (a natural herbal stimulant) plantations, timber, construction of the Itaipú hydropower plant, and trade in the neighbouring Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Este, where thousands of Brazilians buy goods cheaply for re-sale in their faraway home towns, Pastorello explained.

 
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