World War I - Names

Names

In Canada, Maclean's Magazine in October 1914 said, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War." A history of the origins and early months of the war published in New York in late 1914 was titled The World War. During the Interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries.

After the onset of the Second World War in 1939, the terms World War I or the First World War became standard, with British and Canadian historians favouring the First World War, and Americans World War I. Both of these terms had also been used during the Interwar period. The term "First World War" was first used in September 1914 by the German philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word." The First World War was also the title of a 1920 history by the officer and journalist Charles à Court Repington.

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Famous quotes containing the word names:

    Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn’t order any credit cards! We don’t spend what we don’t have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?
    Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)

    No, no! I don’t, I don’t want to know your name. You don’t have a name, and I don’t have a name, either. No names here. Not one name.
    Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940)