Can one quarrel with geographical names?

Here: see explanations for difference in terms, how they came to be historically and how to use both at once!!

... Persian Gulf / Arabian Gulf. ... In Western countries it is normally referred to as
the Persian Gulf, while it in all Arab countries is called Arabian Gulf. ...
i-cias.com/e.o/pers_glf.htm - 16k - Cached - Similar pages

The Persian Gulf
... links on Persian Gulf by Toronto journalist Bala Menon who lived for many years
in Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates Arabian (Persian)Gulf region. ...
www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3763/ - 17k - Cached - Similar pages

Technical Products & Services for the Arabian/Persian Gulf
Haris Al Afaq: Technical Industrial trading and services company in the
Arabian/Persian Gulf based out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. ...
www.haris.com/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

[PDF]An Event Data Set for the Arabian/Persian Gulf Region 1979-1997
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Your browser may not have a PDF reader available. Google recommends visiting our text version of this document.
An Event Data Set for the Arabian/Persian Gulf Region 1979-1997 Philip A. Schrodt
and Deborah J. Gerner Department of Political Science University of Kansas ...
web.polmeth.ufl.edu/papers/99/schro99b.pdf - Similar pages



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Note added at 2003-06-21 15:41:02 (GMT)
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To suit your customers\' tastes, you can say

PERSIAN/ARABIAN GULF AND BE DONE WITH IT...

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Note added at 2003-06-21 15:43:14 (GMT)
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the sites above show that the SLASH means both terms are used at once..

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Note added at 2003-06-21 15:52:41 (GMT)
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Suggestion Antony:

Tell your customer you can either say:

the Gulf region with region

OR
the Persian/Arabian Gulf and let him make the choice...

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Note added at 2003-06-23 15:22:46 (GMT)
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Note to BOurth:

Translation IS NOT CONTENT CORRECTION....:)

Presumably the common and simple English "Persian Gulf" might well offend the Arabs living around the Western and Southern shores of it (and perhaps elsewhere), if they do, indeed, call it by another name.

Never having heard of its being called by any other name, the thought never occured to me that it would even (almost surely) have one. After all, "Mare Nostrum" never really caught on for the Meditterranean, except among the Romans.

I look forward to someone here informing us what the preferred Arabic name might be and how to say that in English --however, just literally translating the French circumlocution (brilliantly diplomatic and Politically Correct though it is) into English will result in an awkward neologism, I'm afraid.

Explain to your client that he cannot recreate the English language to suit his own business, and that if he insists upon using English as a medium through which to communicate, then he must abide by the rules of the language.

If he cannot accept this, you might offer to find him a translator for both Persian and Arabic and thus avoid the problem altogether.

Finally, you might also explain to him that the region is already sufficiently well divided in terms of language and geography: there is the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arab Sea. Together they are one contiguous body of water that empties into the Indian Ocean.

Does he have Pakistani clients as well?

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Note added at 2003-06-21 16:25:21 (GMT)
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Francis Marc\'s entry is also a good candidate, provided that your client does not perform business beyond the countries that surround it. There are many gulfs in the world, and everyone who lives near one probably refers to it simply as \"the gulf\".

Unless the color is sensistive ?

To the best of my knowledge, "mer arabo-persique" is not a standard geographical name in any case. It gets ONE hit on the web.

Before we start translating it, can anyone tell us where it is, and what it means. If it is indeed the Persian Gulf we are talking about, the French for that is Golfe Persique. So if the French writer rebaptized it, then it can equally well be rebaptized "Arabian/Persian Sea" in English.

But that doesn't tell us what we are talking about. There is the Arabian Sea of course, which is what the Persian Gulf flows into. The Arabian Sea is the NW part of the Indian Ocean, bordered by Yemen, Oman, Iran, Pakistan, India. Maybe the "Mer Arabo-Persique" is the Arabian Sea. Or maybe it covers a wider area, encompassing both the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. This would be a new geographical concept and would also deserve a new name in English.

Another solution, of course, would be to refer to "the waters bordering on Persia and (either/or):
- some of the Arabian states and emirates
- Saudi Arabia".

Even this latter solution is fraught with risks since Pakistan and India might take objection, given that they are not Arabs;

Find out (or tell us) what it means first, and then we might be able to reach a conclusion.

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Note added at 2003-06-21 20:19:09 (GMT)
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Given your client\'s specific instructions to find a \"neutral\" term, I strongly expect he himself coined the expression in French. Consequently there is no \"correct\", standard, universally accepted translation. I would avoid using any (other) \"correct\", standard, and universally accepted terms since, being so, they cannot possibly correspond to the words you have in front of you.