LETTER: Foolish Name

I think it is not just the Oriental Studies department faculty or a "group" (your word, not mine, though an apt one) of students or even the dean, Rosemary Stevens, who should decide about a name change for a department, but everybody in the University community, particularly when the name change is from something pretty like Oriental Studies to this new monstrosity, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. I am willing to go anywhere to argue against this name change, and, as Mrs. Slocum in the British comedy "Are You Being Served" says, "I am unanimous in this." When I first heard about this foolishness, I thought it would blow over. When I read that the City Council had condemned the name, I knew things were getting serious but still thought (hoped?) that the foolishness would blow over. But then when I read that the faculty in the Oriental Studies department had caved in to this group and changed their name and all that stood between a name change and officialdom was the dean's "evaluation," whatever that is, then I knew we were in overtime, sudden death, and I mean it was real sudden-like. Just a small note on etymology. "Asia" is the Greek (through Latin) word for "land of the rising sun" and Europe is the Greek (again through Latin) word for, you guessed it, "the land of the setting sun," all, of course, from the Greek point of view. The easternmost province of Cuba is called Orienta, which is where, by the way, Castro started his revolution against Batista. French has something called "Etudes Orientales," which is Oriental Studies. I know neither French nor Spanish, but I do know that they are both Latin languages. And Orientalism, by my Random House Webster's College Dictionary, is defined as "the knowledge and study of Oriental languages, literature, etc.," which is precisely what the people in Oriental Studies do. So, what are we doing here, going from Latin to Greek? And, by the way, don't we already have a department named "South Asia Regional Studies"? This new name for the Oriental Studies department is confusing, to say the least. And a final note on offensiveness. Nigger, kike, wop, dago, spic, honky, frog (for the French), limey (for the British), Jap, slope, wog, chink (you have to have been in the Army to know some of these last ones -- I remember one time in Vietnam hearing someone say, "I just saw a frog," and thinking, "What the hell is a frog?") are always offensive and disparaging. Oriental is sometimes offensive. Oriental in Oriental Studies is not one of those times. It probably came from the French, "Etudes Orientals," which is perfectly innocent. DANIEL VINING Associate Professor Regional Science