Cabo Verde

[Doug Ewell]

The United Nations Statistics Division has changed the name associated 
with code element 132 from "Cape Verde" to "Cabo Verde" as of November 
1.

There has been no corresponding change yet in ISO 3166-1 for code 
element 'CV'. When this kind of thing happens, it usually takes ISO 
3166/MA a few weeks to a few months to follow suit.

The following article from Panapress sheds some light:

(original Portuguese)

    Nova York - A missão permanente cabo-verdiana nas Nações Unidas 
anunciou que o Governo de Cabo Verde decidiu manter a designação oficial 
de "República de Cabo Verde" em todas as correspondências oficiais, 
pondo fim à sua tradução em línguas estrangeiras.

    Numa carta endereçada aos países-membros da ONU e ao 
Secretário-Geral da organização, o representante permamente de Cabo 
Verde, António Pedro Monteiro Lima, revela que, doravante,  o nome 
oficial de "Cabo Verde" será o mesmo em todas as línguas oficiais no 
seio da ONU.

    Segundo ele, a denominação "Cabo Verde" não deverá ser objeto de 
tradução nas outras línguas, sublinhando que a designação completa em 
inglês deverá ser "Republic of Cabo Verde" e "République de Cabo Verde" 
em francês.

(translation by Google, except for country name)

    New York - The Permanent Mission of Cabo Verde to the United Nations 
announced that the Government of Cabo Verde has decided to keep the 
official name of "República de Cabo Verde" in all official 
correspondence, ending its foreign language translation.

    In a letter addressed to the member states of the UN and the 
Secretary General of the organization, the permanent representative of 
Cabo Verde, António Pedro Monteiro Lima, reveals that henceforth the 
official name of "Cabo Verde" will be the same in all the official 
languages within the UN.

    According to him, the name "Cabo Verde" shall not be subject to 
translation into other languages​​, stressing that the full name in 
English should be "Republic of Cabo Verde" and "République de Cabo 
Verde" in French.


If and when ISO 3166 (a primary source for country names for the IANA 
Language Subtag Registry) picks up this change, I propose that we update 
the Registry record for region subtag 'CV' as follows:

Type: region
Subtag: CV
Description: Cabo Verde
Description: Cape Verde
Added: 2005-10-16

That is, the new Description field "Cabo Verde" would be listed first, 
analogous to the rule in Section 3.1.5 for language subtags, but "Cape 
Verde" would be retained in the second spot for compatibility.

I expect there may be alternative proposals, so let's have this 
discussion now so we can submit a form right away when the time comes.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, USA
http://ewellic.org | @DougEwell ­