27 Jun 2026

issue 27 June 2026

Comments

Thank heaven my husband doesn’t even pretend to like football. Indeed he emphasises his indifference by making ironic remarks like: ‘Poor old Ivory Coast was robbed.’

The World Cup has brought out the Babel in naming countries. Do we call them by the established English names or by what they call themselves? Ivory Coast, which has French as its official language, calls itself Côte d’Ivoire. (Diacritics cause online complications, as with plucky little Curaçao, which I heard referred to as ‘Cure-a-cow’.) Fifa too employs the home-grown Côte d’Ivoire, but BBC News and BBC Sport call it Ivory Coast.