Rephaboliki ya Afrika-Borw

Welcome to the fray, Mike Herrmann, a.k.a. Martin Fabricio. I was beginning to worry our esteemed fourth member didn’t know what a blog was.

Mike brings up an interesting point — part of me feels we should all have football names. Problem is, I’ve never been able to come up with a good one. Martin Fabricio is good, although I do believe it originally was intended as a Formula 1 name. But that’s OK. Mike’s and my former roommate Phil had a good one, which was based on an old-school dishwashing detergent and in the Brazilian single-name mold:

Rinso.

He got it off an old-school store sign that was in a local pub. Phil sent me this photo the other day, from somewhere in Newtown in Sydney:



Speaking of names, here is an interesting fact about our host country: It has 11 official names.

According to the country’s Constitution, each of the 11 official languages has an official name for the nation to match:

• Republiek van Suid-Afrika (Afrikaans)
• Republic of South Africa (English)
• IRiphabliki yeSewula Afrika (IsiNdebele)
• IRiphabliki yaseMzantsi Afrika (IsiXhosa)
• IRiphabliki yaseNingizimu Afrika (IsiZulu)
• Rephaboliki ya Afrika-Borwa (Sepedi)
• Rephaboliki ya Afrika Borwa (Sesotho)
• Rephaboliki ya Aforika Borwa (Setswana)
• IRiphabhulikhi yeNingizimu Afrika (SiSwati)
• Riphabuḽiki ya Afurika Tshipembe (Tshivenda)
• Riphabliki ra Afrika Dzonga (Xitsonga)

There you go.