In public radio they do our utmost to get things right, including the pronunciation of names and places. It shows they know their stuff and conveys respect — for the people they report about and the people who make up audiences.

But words in other languages can be difficult to say on air, and some public radio listeners bristle at hearing names enunciated with non-English accents. As a multilingual journalist who spent nearly two decades reporting from overseas, Jerome Socolovsky has thought a lot about how to name people and places in a way that is accurate and understandable to listeners. What do you do? Here’s a guide.

Last year, officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj — a word that references the Hindu pilgrimage site there. The name Allahabad dated to the 16th century, a legacy of a Muslim ruler, the Mughal Emperor Akbar.

Allahabad’s renaming has made headlines not for the hassles of changing signs, but for a growing trend of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics. Over the past five years of Modi’s term as prime minister, Hindu nationalist politicians from the BJP have renamed Indian towns, streets, airports and one of the country’s biggest train stations, swapping names that reflect Muslim heritage for Hinducentric ones.

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to change the name of a South L.A. intersection to honor late rapper Nipsey Hussle. Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he will officially submit a motion to rename the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue to “Nipsey Hussle Square.”

Nipsey Hussle, whose real name is Ermias Asghedom, had a song called “Crenshaw and Slauson (True Story)”. A nearly 12-minute documentary-style music video for the song features real people from the Crenshaw neighborhood, where Nipsey Hussle grew up. His store, Marathon Clothing, is also located at this intersection. The Grammy-nominated rapper was shot, along with two other people, while standing outside of his store.

In today’s digital world, standardized geographical names are vital. They help us find our way in society and they also help us organize the world we live in. They also play a key role in our efforts to achieve sustainable development, providing fundamental channels of communication, facilitating cooperation among local, national and international organizations.

This month, the “new” United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) will convene for its 2019 Session from 29 April to 3 May 2019 at UN Headquarters in New York. The session, organized by UN DESA’s Statistics Division, brings together over 150 experts from national naming authorities and academia to discuss strategies and methodologies by which the standardization of geographical names can be advanced.

Do you know the meaning of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander place names? What’s the story behind them? It’s time to find out.

From the name of a town or suburb; to a street or bridge; a creek or a bend in the river; mountain; landmark; outcrop; tree – place names are a starting point for sharing Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and cultures. ‘This Place’ invites Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to create a short video about a place name, and the story behind it. The This Place project is produced by ABC in partnership with First Languages Australia.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation announced the list of proposed Hawaiian names for the 12 rail stations between Pearl Harbor and Ala Moana Center.

The names were recommended by the HART Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group, which considered diverse community knowledge, oral accounts and written history to come up with the names with the goal of reflecting forgotten place names and significant sites in Hawaiian culture. The group previously recommended names for the rail stations between Aloha Stadium and Kapolei. Hawaiian names for rail stations help to keep alive the traditions, culture and history of this special place.

From the earliest times in China’s history, there have been studies focusing on ancient place names. Since the formation of modern toponymy, more and more scientific methods have been applied. Since the launch of the China Geographical Names Cultural Heritage Protection Project in 2004, the protection and research of toponymy has attracted wide attention of academic circles.

There are more than 100,000 ancient place names covering China’s existing political districts, settlements, mountains, rivers and roads. Tan Ruwei, professor from the Cultural Geography Research Center at Tianjin Normal University, said that toponymy contains not only geographical, but also social and cultural phenomena.

Read about the secret of Chinese toponyms here.

Kyiv City Council on April 4 voted to rename Ivan Kudrya Street in central Kyiv John McCain Street. The initiative was supported by 71 of 120 deputies of the City Council. Kiev authorities also received consent from the family of the American politician.

The name of Senator McCain will now bear the street Hero of the Soviet Union, Ivan Kudrya. During World War II, he was a scout and led an underground reconnaissance and sabotage group in Kiev. The authorities in Kiev chose this street because McCain fought for democratic values ​​and “defended the interests of Ukraine,” the website says. Residents of the city also offered to name the street in honor of the senator – they, together with public organizations, registered the appropriate petition.

A new study says that cats can learn and react to the sound of their own name. It also claims to be the first experimental evidence that cats can discern human speech.

The results published in journal Scientific Reports do not suggest cats can attach meaning to words or understand their name refers to their identity, researcher Atsuko Saito of Sophia University in Tokyo explained. Rather, Japanese scientists documented that cats reacted differently to their own name as compared to other words — they perked up. From the results of all experiments, it thus appears that at least cats living in ordinary households can distinguish their own names from general words and names of other cats,” the study reads.