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With a 1,000-year history, a Croix de Guerre and a gallery of famous visitors including William the Conqueror and Richard the Lionheart, the small Normandy town of Eu has much to be proud of. The trouble is that tourists are passing it by – and it is all the fault of the internet.
Type Eu into a French search engine and you are more likely to get the past participle of the verb avoir, to have, than the estimable château, hotels, restaurants and gardens of the ancient royal borough. For English surfers, Eu predictably retrieves a long list of European Union websites.
This has caused the town of 8,000 people to lose out on the tourist boom in northern Normandy because people depend increasingly on the internet for information and bookings, according to the council in Eu. The final straw came when the computers of the SNCF railways decided that Eu did not exist.
Now Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the Mayor of Eu, wants to add extra syllables to make the town more internet-visible. In the process she will doubtless be hoping to kill off an old and embarrassing pun on her title: la Maire d’Eu, which sounds the same as saying la merde.
In the 1840s, when Eu was the summer retreat of King Louis-Philippe and was visited by Queen Victoria, the French sang a naughty song written by the town librarian. One verse ends: “A chamber pot is enough for a Maire d’Eu.” To avoid this unfortunate misunderstanding, the stationery of the town hall has long carried the letterhead “Mairie de la Ville d’Eu”.
This is the name that Ms Gaouyer wants for the town. She is seeking a referendum on this and other suggestions such as Eu-le-Château and Eu-en-Normandie.
Ms Gaouyer acknowledges that the name has often raised a laugh and is appreciated by crossword enthusiasts – the usual clue is un trou Normand.
“We must adapt to modernity, especially in the context of the internet,” she told the newspaper ParisNormandie. Because it has flummoxed search engines, Eu made only €7,700 (£6,800) in hotel visitor taxes last year, instead of the expected €24,000.
The change is being resisted by some who value its history – William the Conqueror married Mathilde in the castle chapel, Joan of Arc stayed there and the town was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1944.
Eric Pradels, a shop owner, said that Eu would lose a famous attribute: “When people ask my address, I hear them hesitate … That gives me a chance to talk about the town.”
It will take four years to make the change, however, because it requires a council vote, a referendum, a parliamentary Act and Cabinet approval.
What’s in a name?
— Residents of Vantoux (“the Vandals”) in France voted overwhelmingly last year to change its name to Vantouseins (“from Vantoux”). The Mayor, Claude Vellei, said: “Too many visitors came here expecting to meet the wrong kind of people”
— Olema, a small town in Marin County, California, changed two letters in its name to become Obama, in honour of the President
— In 2003 the Sicilian population of Corleone was divided by a petition to change the town’s name. To divorce it from its notorious mafia connections, some wanted to revert to its ancient name Cour di Leone (“Lion Heart”) but the Mayor, Nicolo Nicolosi, rejected the idea as “total rubbish”
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Full article: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5799368.ece
Photo: London Times
