by Richard Stern

Was it six and a half years ago that a smartass newsman flunked Candidate G. W. Bush on ignorance of world leaders' names and countries? Which Western leader today would be able to pronounce, let alone memorize, some of the names of today's world leaders? A few might manage the new U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon of Thailand, but his deputy-secretary designate, Asha-Rose Mtengeti-Migiro of Tanzania will surely take more getting used to than that of the under-secretary designate, Alicia Barcena Ibarra of Mexico. It's when we call the roll of ambassadors and foreign ministers that the new nominal orchestra is apparent: Dumisani S. Kumalo of South Africa manages to trip off this American tongue but the deputy prime minister of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, doesn't. Jeno C. A. Staehelm (Switzerland) is on the border of the manageable but Vijay Lunhianandan (India) requires a special visa. Read the NY Times' world news columns 50 years ago, and the average American has little trouble with names; today's columns make a country road pocked with sink holes. Now that 46 percent of the Berkeley student body is of oriental background, it is not unlikely that a name quiz given to U.S. presidential candidates in 2040 might be full of such mouth-stoppers as Bill Jones and Johnny Reilly. Or will the transnational flow of information have made all the world's names as straightforward and euphonious as Lee and Rockefeller are for most of us?