Forty Years Of The Coordinating Committee For Geoscience - CCOP

Box 9
What’s in a Name?
Geoscientists, accustomed to controversy about how rocks, fossils and other geological items
should be classified and named, like to be accurate with their nomenclature. It is not
surprising therefore that CCOP would, from time to time, have its own problems in the
naming of things and even the usage of its own acronym, CCOP. In 1984 the Steering
Committee heard that the Indian delegation at the ESCAP meeting in Tokyo had insisted that
the acronym CCOP should be changed to CCOP/EA to make clear the organisation’s eastern
Asian affinities. However, after sixteen years of usage the Steering Committee decided that,
India’s objections notwithstanding, CCOP would remain its chosen designation. Geographic
names can also be controversial. A longstanding disagreement between Japan and Korea
centred on the name of the expanse of sea between the two countries which the Japanese
insisted was the Sea of Japan whilst the Koreans referred to it as Donghae (East Sea). A
CCOP publication of an atlas of high resolution offshore seismic profiles, the results of a
joint project between CCOP and the British Geological Survey, caused heated argument at
the CCOP Annual Session of 1995. The Japanese Head of Delegation from the Japanese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted only the term Sea of Japan should appear in the Korean
section of the atlas, a change that would delay publication. However, several diplomatic
meetings later the atlas was published with a compromised solution for the Korean section
which avoided using any formal name for the sea in question.
Figure 20. Mickey Mouse science: CCOP delegates, all born in the “Year of the Rat”, held a
celebratory party at the 33rd Annual Session in Shanghai in 1996.
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A World of Difference