Faeoroe

[Paul Eggert]

Oscar van Vlijmen <ovv at hetnet.nl> writes:

> The English spelling is: Faroe Islands

For what it's worth, the Oxford English Dictionary prefers
the English spelling "Faröe", with an umlaut over the "o".
It gives alternate English spellings of "Færoe" (i.e., an
"ae" ligature after the "F") and "Feroe".  Presumably tz's
"Faeroe" comes from an ASCIIzation of the ligatured version.

Obviously none of these other names are suitable for the tz
database.  We are limited to ASCII, and "Feroe" (the only
pure ASCII name) is rarely used nowadays, as the last OED
example is dated 1855.  Given its current popularity "Faroe"
looks like the best alternative.

I speculate that part of the problem is that the islands'
name was imported into English before Danish was a separate
language, so the English name is derived from Scandinavian
(or perhaps Scandinavian transliterated into Latin).  A
confusing situation, to say the least.

The OED quotes T.N. Annandale's _Faroes_ (1905) as saying
"The Faroeman is by nature peaceable."  Sounds like a nice
place!