On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

Similarly where do I go to tell TfL that "Queen Mary & Westfield College"
is out of date and should read "Queen Mary, University of London" on the
bus stops, timetable and DLR area map? This one seriously annoys me - QMW
is seriously out of date and everything now says QMUL.

Despite it not being terribly sensical. Queen Mary *what*? It's clearly
not an actual queen - nor is it a university of London!

No but it's named after a Queen (Mary of Teck aka Mrs George V). And it
is part of the University of London (one of the loyalist parts of the
lot). I guess whoever originated the style (there's also "Birkbeck,
University of London", "Royal Holloway, University of London" and now
"Goldsmiths, University of London") may have been thinking of "Queen's
University of Belfast" or "State University of New York" or somesuch.

But not thinking too hard about the need for nouns.

I hadn't realised Birkbeck and Goldsmiths had gone that way too; yuck.
What next? "Oriental and African, University of London"? Sounds like a
shipping line! Or even "University, University of London"?

It seems QMUL is a sort of trading name, with the real name still being
QMW. As you say, everyone calls it QMUL, and i agree that buses should
too, but it's somewhat interesting anyway.

The main problems are that "College" and "Westfield" are not used in the
name given on *EVERYTHING*, whilst "University" is missing from the name
on bus stops and timetables (for someone who doesn't know the area too
well, having "university" there does help them). And "Westfield" is
historically very recent - it only merged with QM in 1989 and the name
was dropped from day to day use in 2000 - so it's not as if this is an
essential historic name.

Agreed. But the current name still annoys me!

tom

--
double mashed, future mashed, millennium mashed; man it was mashed