hollywood8118 wrote:I guess it is supposed to give our First Nation folks here around PUGET SOUND all kinds of warm fuzzies...
HOLLYWOOD
I can understand the reasoning behind wanting to come up with some way of designating the entire inland body of water between Budd Inlet at the south end of Puget Sound* and Desolation Sound at the north end of the Strait of Georgia in BC since there are a lot of issues that encompass the whole area affecting things like fish, whale, crab, etc. populations, shipping, fishing, water quality, pollutant runoff, etc.* So being able to say one name for the whole deal instead of having to rattle off all the different names of the individual bodies of water every time has some merit in some situations I think.
As to whether Salish is the most appropriate name, that one I'll leave to the lobbiests who argued in favor of whatever their favorite names were.
But I see the term Salish Sea popping up more and more in articles, newspaper stories, and I even heard it used recently in a local TV newscast.* So I suspect that, like anything new, it will gradually creep into the language until one day people won't even remember what it was called before.* Actually, I don't think it was called anything before.* Salish Sea is not meant to replace names like Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca, Strait of Georgia, etc.* It's just a name for the whole area.* Same as "Pacific Northwest" encompasses Washington and Oregon (and BC, too, I guess, if one doesn't view it as a US term).
-- Edited by Marin on Friday 18th of February 2011 03:03:03 PM