For the first month of 2020 I googled the coronavirus in China. For most of the second month, I did the same thing. But with it's not so-warm-benvenuto to northern Italy, I stopped googling. Most of my news poured in from worried friends in America and that's where I noticed the name change. According to the the World Health Organization "COVID 19 is the name of the illness caused by the coronavirus" (which I've decided no longer needs to be capitalized).
Unfortunately, I've become so used to the coronavirus, I'm finding it hard to change its name. COVID 19 seems like a nickname and according to Cambridge Dictionary a nickname is "an informal name for someone or sometimes something, used especially to show affection." And since we haven't felt a lot of affection for COVID 19, we aren't embracing the new name. It came as the coronavirus and (hopefully) it will leave as the coronavirus. And anyway,
"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet."
---William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
(better known in Italy as Romeo e Giulietta, pronounced as I've mentioned before "Ro-MAY-o ay Ju-li-ET-ta").
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