I’ve paid close attention to country names during my many years of combing through 12MC access logs. Naturally I’ve looked for patterns and trends. I’m not sure what drew my particular attention to the names of nations containing the conjunction AND.
It was probably one of those days when multiple instances appeared by chance. I imagine it offered something beyond the ordinary rate of occurrences. By my count there were a total of six of these nations. I examined three of them for today’s article and I’ll discuss the remaining three in a follow-on post. I will present them in alphabetical order because it seemed as good a pattern as any.
The mere existence of these nations brought a number of questions to mind. Couldn’t their founders come up with a single name that represented the collective? How did they decide which name came first, was it a sign of importance or what? I decided to focus on the junior partners in each arrangement because they deserved a little extra attention. They sat at the tail-end of the nations’ names for all those years.
Antigua and Barbuda
The Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda shared an intertwined history. However, Barbuda had a very small population. So it became a poor candidate on its own when the United Kingdom spun-off various colonial possessions. It made sense to append Barbuda onto Antigua to form a single nation.
However, no decent collective name described the set. I supposed they could have played around with Leeward Islands or Lesser Antilles. Unfortunately those described larger arrays of islands aligned with several colonial powers. Antigua and Barbuda was good enough.
Columbus
Christopher Columbus spotted both islands and he bestowed their names, the Spanish words for Ancient and Bearded. Those were odd choices. I’ve never seen an island with a beard. Nonetheless that’s what happened and the names stuck down through the centuries. The native Carib inhabitants were particularly fierce and it took almost 150 years for anyone to establish a colony on Antigua. It was the English who finally succeeded.
Codrington
Early in its history, Christopher Codrington established a sprawling sugar plantation with the labor of African slaves, helping to spur Antigua’s growth. He needed to provision his huge Antiguan estate so he and his brother leased the island of Barbuda: “They were granted the first 50 year lease for Barbuda by King Charles II on 9 January 1685. The rent ascribed to the lease was ‘one fat sheep yearly if demanded’.”
Thus, Antigua and Barbuda forged a bond from the earliest days of colonialism. This relationship remained intact when independence arrived in 1981. Antigua still dwarfed Barbuda in population and economic activity, and comprised several parishes. Barbuda became its own single unit. It had barely fifteen hundred residents, most living in the sole town of Codrington (map), compared to the nearly one hundred thousand residents of the nation as a whole. It made sense for Barbuda to play second fiddle.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
I decided to generally sidestep the complex historical situation of the two namesakes forming Bosnia and Herzegovina. After all, these lands fell within the Balkans. They very term Balkanization described segmented small states that fought amongst themselves, either on the Balkan Peninsula or more generally.
A Convoluted Situation
The breakup of Yugoslavia near the end of the Twentieth Century allowed old hatreds to reemerge. Ethnic groups fought for position aligned with ancient grudges. Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of several new nations that rose from the tattered scraps of the former Yugoslavia. However, first they underwent additional armed clashes, bloodshed and ethnic cleansing across the land. The current Bosnia and Herzegovina came out of the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 and subsequent negotiations in Paris.
Even its overall construct was confusing. The present nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina became two nominally autonomous regions. One was the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other was Republika Srpska. That’s right, Bosnia and Herzegovina had a sub-unit called the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Someone living in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina also lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However someone living in Bosnia and Herzegovina didn’t necessarily live in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And Even More Convoluted
I examined the second banana, Herzegovina, a little closer. There didn’t appear to be a clearly defined boundary for Herzegovina in present Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was somewhat amorphous in historical terms too. Generally it fell at the southern edge of the nation along with its unofficial capital at Mostar. Herzegovina had been around for a long time though, dating back at least to the Fifteenth Century. Herzog was a heraldic title in the German language adopted to this corner of the Balkans. It equaled Duke in the English language. Herzegovina meant nothing more than the “duke’s land.”
Mostar had a similarly simplistic etymology. The Ottomans under Suleiman the Magnificent built a bridge over the Neretva River in the Sixteenth Century. It was an amazing bridge with an exaggerated arch like something from a fairy tale. The bridge earned a name over time, the Stari Most, meaning Old Bridge (map). Those who protected the bridge became “mostari”, or bridge keepers. The town where the bridge crossed the river became Mostar, the old bridge town. Stari Most survived through the ages. Then in 1993, Croat army forces destroyed it during fighting that erupted as Yugoslavia underwent its death throws. The current bridge is a reconstruction.
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis sat due west of Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean Sea, about forty miles (65 kilometres) away. No nation in the Americas had fewer citizens, barely fifty thousand. Despite its proximity to Antigua and Barbuda, the history of Saint Kitts and Nevis differed considerably. Spanish, French and British powers all controlled these lands, sometimes cooperatively and more often in forceful opposition.
British Control
Britain eventually won that struggle and the islands remained solely in British hands starting at the Eighteenth Century. Britain placed the two into a forced arrangement along with the island of Anguilla for governance purposes. None of them really got along with each other.
Anguilla managed to extricate itself in the 1970’s. So Saint Kitts and Nevis remained together when the United Kingdom granted sovereignty in 1983. Tensions continue to exist between the two islands even today as they plod along in an arranged marriage. Occasionally Nevis makes overtures of separation.
A Closer Look at Nevis
Nevis would be a highly unusual nation. It had only twelve thousand residents and precious few resources other than tourism and a budding tax haven for individuals and companies hoping to hide their assets.
I focused on this island way back in the very early days of 12MC in The Point of Five Nevis Parishes in 2008. It held a rather fascinating geo-oddity. The island formed roughly an oval with its five parishes meeting at a common point atop a volcano at its center, Nevis Peak (map). Each parish formed a pie wedge. Theoretically one could climb to the top of Nevis Peak and stand in all five parishes at the same time.
The Hamilton Connection
I supposed I should note that Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis. Fans of the Broadway musical Hamilton might find that interesting. From an unlikely beginning on Nevis, Hamilton arrived in New York for an education, worked his way onto the staff of General George Washington during the American Revolution, supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, became the nation’s first Secretary of State the Treasury, and then died after Aaron Burr shot him in a duel. That was quite a pedigree. His image also adorned the U.S. $10 bill although there was talk of replacing him a few months ago. The success of the musical may have been sufficient to save Hamilton from that fate. What a strange turn of events.
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