{"id":16018,"date":"2015-06-07T08:59:11","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T13:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=16018"},"modified":"2021-12-06T08:01:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T13:01:10","slug":"head-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/head-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Head of the Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I thought back to my school days when a teacher would call roll alphabetically. Naturally people with surnames like Anderson would get the first call. Mine fell somewhere in the middle so I had to pay attention for a little while. Then I could daydream for the rest of the drill. However, I always felt sorry for people named Zimmerman or such who had to remain on their toes the entire time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those lucky Andersons, though. They could kick-back and relax, their jobs completed immediately thanks to a simple quirk of alphabetical order. I could probably say the same thing about countries. Imagine Afghanistan at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, first in line and grabbing a big dose of attention. Compare that to Zimbabwe. Most viewers probably tune out by the time Zimbabwe strolls along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That got me wondering about which city, town, or village might grab the very first spot in an alphabetical line. Sure, it would vary based upon the language used to sort through the list. Even so, I didn’t let that spoil any of my fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research appeared to be amazingly deficient though. I figured I’d find a ready list somewhere on the Intertubes and it would be easy. Perhaps that existed somewhere but I couldn’t find it. That meant I searched for a maximum of about 30 seconds. I did uncover the next best thing, Wikipedia’s List of towns and cities with 100,000 or more inhabitants<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Coru\u00f1a, Spain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Coru\u00f1a.<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Coru\u00f1a in Spain rose to the very top of that list (map<\/a>). That was its officially-recognized name in the Galician language. This spelling predominated in the northwestern corner of Spain that was once part of the Kingdom of Galicia. In Spanish it was La Coru\u00f1a and in English sometimes just Corunna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the rules of alphabetization, nothing came before something. So the single letter A followed by a space came before A followed by additional letters. Thus Wikipedia placed it first because no other city started with the single letter A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a bit of a quibble with A Coru\u00f1a. The letter A was used as a definite article. Many grammarians claim that one should disregard a definite article in an alphabetical list. That happened regularly with geographic place names, e.g., The Bahamas becomes “Bahamas, The<\/a>” and The Gambia transforms into “Gambia, The<\/a>“. I’m sure there are plenty of learned people who debate these finer points back-and-forth. Not me. Anyway, placing A Coru\u00f1a at the front of the line felt like cheating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aachen, Germany<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Aachen<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aachen seemed to align more properly with the spirit of the contest. It began with a double-A followed immediately by another letter near the start of the alphabet in the third position. AAC would be a hard combination to beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People have lived in the Aachen area (map<\/a>) since neolithic times, drawn there by its warm spring-fed waters. It became a spa town during Roman times and then a favored place of kings such as Charlemagne. Modern aficionados of geo-oddities also appreciated Aachen for its placement on the German side of the Belgium – Netherlands – Germany (BEDENL<\/a>) tripoint, and prior to that as part of the quadripoint with the bizarre Neutral Moresnet<\/a> “no man’s land” condominium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aaron, USA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n