Manchester mouse born from mountain
My postings on university names have elicited a flood of wonderful
details about one naming history after another, many of them remarkably
twisted. I don't think I'm up to coping with the story of CCNY,
or even the full tale of CSU, and I had planned to avoid the tangled
Manchester history, but now a colleague at Manchester has supplied a
sprightly narrative from the inside. I have suppressed this
colleague's name, in case the Manchester administration might seek
revenge (tempers run high in such matters, egos are easily bruised, and
memories are regrettably long).
My institution was for many years known
interchangeably as "University of Manchester" and "Manchester
University", thus illustrating one of the threads you have covered in
Language Log. Only when feeling very pompous and formal did it
use its full title, "Victoria University of Manchester". It had a
sister/offshoot institution called, almost universally, "UMIST", which
stood (or had once stood) for "University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology". The relationship between them was
complex and had changed several times in the course of the twentieth
century. In some respects UMIST was legally one faculty of
Manchester University, in others a separate and thriving
institution. (I have not checked any of these details, which were
confusing enough even when fresh in the memory.) By the end of
the millennium, UMIST had effectively become a wholly separate
university. Then a grand plan emerged to bring them together
again as a single university in 2004, one of the largest in the UK, and
- yes - with one of those resounding mission statements about world
domination by 2015. [AMZ note: 2015 figures very prominently in
these Mission Statements, 2010 apparently being just too soon to
achieve lofty goals.] It was really quite a large-scale merger by
British university standards. But what to call the important new
arrival? It clearly had to have the words "University" and
"Manchester" in it, but it could not be called "University of
Manchester", lest UMIST people should feel that they had been absorbed
by the larger partner. Consultants were employed, meetings were
held, questionnaires went out to all stakeholders (as they are called)
in both institutions. It all took a long time. Eventually
we in the "University of Manchester" learnt what our new name was to
be: it was "The University of Manchester". We had gained a
definite article. Our "The" must always have initial caps (and
its font, size, colour and spacing in logos and letterheads and posters
and websites are minutely regulated). It's a very definite
article.
Yeah, I know, those of you who know me fairly well will have
immediately figured out who my correspondent is. I'm just trying
to maintain plausible deniability.
Notice the "or once stood for". It's like the Menlo Park research
company SRI International; "SRI"
DOESN'T STAND FOR ANYTHING,
they say. No Stanford in there, no way. Like "A&M" in
"Texas A&M University"
DOESN'T STAND FOR ANYTHING.
There's no "Agricultural and Mechanical" in the name, absolutely not.
We have the legal documents.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at September 5, 2006 06:09 PM