ROME: 29th September '04 -- Readers would see the initialism EAO often enough in the austraLasia e-letters.  It saves space, but it has another purpose - to act as a memory device, and for good reason; the writer has been known to get the full phrase wrong on at least one occasion!  But he is not alone, it turns out.

    A recent need to trawl through province yearbooks (some call them directories) written in English has elicited a curious fact:  while provinces or vice provinces in the EAO region have the name of their region correctly indicated, almost all others (and yearbooks written in English can be found on several continents or subcontinents) indicate the EAO region title incorrectly!  The title is, of course, EAST ASIA - OCEANIA (based on the official Italian version ASIA EST - OCEANIA and recorded in Acts of GC25).

    What versions are found outside the region?  'East Asia' is the most common.  The variant 'Asia East' too.  Then 'Australia-East Asia', 'Australia - Asia East', 'Asia East-Australia'.  In all of these, the element to suffer is 'Oceania', the which term includes Australia and it also incorporates the South Pacific Islands, Solomon Islands and PNG...and future developments when and if.

    Most other regions fare well, but there is a minor difficulty, it seems, with AMERICA LATINA CONO SUD (official Italian title).  There appears to be a reluctance to deal with the 'cono sud' in English.  It is variously glossed as 'South America', 'America South' in one instance, 'America South Zone', or 'Latin America - Cono Sud'.  The English version found in its official form (e.g. as repeated in GC25 documents - the region already existed), is Latin America - Southern Cone, like it or not.

    And to conclude - it was the use of the word 'economer' which originally led to the trawl through yearbooks, to see if the term is used at community level.  The results are fascinating, and can be explained sociolinguistically, I think.  If you wish to follow that latter point (an hypothesis based on the observable facts) it is contained in a readable 4 page word document downloadable from www.bosconet.aust.com/economer.doc