Nomenclature

Our correspondent the Short-Timer is inspired to muse regarding the naming of peoples native to unusual places. Those from America are Americans, those from Great Britain are British, but those are the easy ones.

He opines that persons native to the Panama Canal Zone are (or at least used to be) properly referred to as "Zonians." A picture being worth a thousand words, we note that one may even purchase these license plates from the gift shop of the Panama Canal Museum.

But this realization leads Short-Timer to ask what one calls natives of the Gaza Strip. "Palestinians" seems inadequate, as it fails to differentiate them from their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the Middle East. And he seems confident that "Gaza Strippers," even as an accident of translation, would be found objectionable.

Ah well. Some questions are beyond our ability to answer.