My all-girls high school, Derham Hall, merged with its brother school, Cretin High School (named for a former bishop, make all the jokes you want here) in 1987. The school now goes by Cretin-Derham Hall, Cretin-Derham, or CDH.
But it bugs me no end that the local newspapers, 20 years after the merger, still dismiss the "Derham" part of the name in headlines and just call the school "Cretin." Another boys-girls school merger resulted in a school called Hill-Murray, but headlines never just call that school "Hill."
I guess it's that the copy editors still remember when Cretin and Derham were separate and see no problem with using the old name, especially for football stories. And the copy editors are probably men, so don't care when the all-girls part of the name falls by the wayside.
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- Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
- I'm an entertainment editor at MSNBC.com, and have maintained Pop Culture Junk Mail since August, 1999. The New York Times called the site "one of the best places to explore pop culture online," and Entertainment Weekly included it on their Top 100 Web Sites list. If you like weird food, strange products, and 1970s and 1980s nostalgia, PCJM is your home away from home.
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2 comments:
They never could pronounce Derham either...how hard is it???
Cretin? Really? As in the insult?
...You'd think they'd WANT to say C-D in the paper just to minimize that effect. Unless someone thinks it's a funny joke to leave it in.
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