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When we got Official English in Colorado, some of us assumed that we'd also receive the benefits that come in other jurisdictions with Official Languages, like France and Iceland, where they get cradle-to-grave medical coverage and at least four weeks of paid vacation every year.
But for some reason, those features haven't been proposed for Colorado, and Official English hasn't even provided us any good old American political patronage jobs, such as a well-paid Colorado Commission on Official Nomenclature.
This is unfortunate, because we could sure use one right now.
One hot issue along the Front Strange is a turf war in Arapahoe County, south of Denver. The municipality of Greenwood Village would like to annex some high-end commercial property. Some people around that property would prefer to incorporate their own 36-square-mile city with about 100,000 people, called Centennial.
There is some dispute about who got there first, the incorporators or the annexers, which is supposed to be resolved with several court hearings -- one on Jan. 19 to determine whether the incorporation petition is valid, and another on Feb. 1 to decide which faction holds priority.
But the judge will not be considering the name, and as names go, Centennial is about as bad as one can get in Colorado. For one thing, the incorporators currently enjoy a rare opportunity to do something momentous and call their new city Millennial, and instead they settle for a mere Centennial.
Colorado is sometimes called the Centennial
State,
because it came into the union in 1876 when the
nation was celebrating the centennial of the Declaration of
Independence.
But that's hardly any credit to Colorado. The territory was established in 1861, and by 1865, its movers and shakers had arranged for a constitution and statehood. But the enabling act faltered in Washington after the Radical Republicans discovered that the proposed state constitution denied the vote to African-Americans.
Colorado tried again in 1868, to no avail, and got statehood in 1876 only because the ruling Republicans in Washington feared -- correctly as it turned out -- that those three new electoral votes would be necessary to keep GOP control of the White House that year.
Colorado is the Centennial State
on account of
decisions that were not made in Colorado, and it does not
reflect Colorado sentiment, which favored statehood a
decade earlier.
But that's just a start on why Centennial is a bad name for a new city. I have no idea why the promoters wanted it, but perhaps they plan to prey off any pilgrims who, after reading the Michener novel, decide there must really be a Centennial, Colo., and they must visit it.
The Centennial of the novel, if it had existed, would be near Kersey, a few miles east of Greeley and home of a notorious pool hall during my youth.
Greeley has already tried to capitalize on that with its
Centennial Village Museum,
and enough is enough. Do
we want potential literary tourists in distant states to
spend hours arguing: The book says Centennial is near
Greeley.
But look, right here on the map, there's a
Centennial south of Denver.
Which would you trust
more, a book or a road map?
To enhance that confusion, the name pops up all over the state. Salida has a Centennial Park, Boulder a Centennial Middle School and Pueblo a Centennial High School. The proposed new city might well also have a Centennial Park, Middle School and High School -- more confusion, at a time when we should be working to reduce confusion.
Beyond our boundaries, there's a Centennial, Wyo., not 20 miles north of the state line. The Centennial Mountains, just west of Yellowstone National Park, form part of the Idaho-Montana Boundary. Arizona boasts a Centennial Wash in Maricopa County.
In short, Centennial is about as trite and overused as a
proper name can get in this state. And while we're at it,
what about Arapahoe
County, as opposed to
Arapaho
National Forest? Which one should Colorado
Official English designate as proper? (Origins aren't much
help here -- the word comes from the Crow term for tattoo,
aa-raxpe-ahu.
)
And then there's Greenwood Village. In the rest of the
world, village
means a rural settlement, smaller
than a town and bigger than a hamlet. In Official Colorado
English, though, it must mean something like pretentious
and over-priced,
as in Vail Village
or Beaver
Creek Village.
More villages, like more Centennials or more Broncos coverage, are about the last thing we need in Colorado. When, oh when, will we get an Official English law with some teeth in it?
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