Visiting Derry/Londonderry. What should I call it?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 24 Jul, 2023
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Call it Derry in the city centre, call it “This city /Londonderry” when going left on Diamond Square (looking from the river side upwards, Left is through the walls and to the primark’s right), Call it Derry elsewhere, specially bogside and uphill from bogside. You’ll notice quite a lot of irish flags there.
Don’t call it Derry after Thursday’s afternoon anywere near the tri-colored sidewalks to the left of diamond square, it’s the start of the weekend “party” time and people won’t be as clear minded and tolerant. Same for Londonderry and the bogside.
It’s an awesome city, been twice to it, you will enjoy it a lot and i didn’t have any trouble, those are “just incase” reccomendations, I hardly got anything above a grumpy look when saying it wrong, but it’s never early to make sure you’re doing things right.
Don’t miss the murals, and the Great Famine museum, and don’t visit the city the 12th December or 18th August, there’s “Loyalist Victory” parades and there’s hard feelings during those days.
Just call it Derry. It’s shorter. Even many unionist leaning people will call Londonderry ‘Derry’ in casual conversation.
The only time you’re ever likely to find issue with using Derry is if you find yourself in a very rough, very loyalist neighbourhood, face to face with a group of youths who are looking for trouble. Which is not a situation most tourists will ever find themselves in.
In normal circumstances even if you run into someone who is an ardent unionist the worst that will happen is they correct you. Londonderry itself though is majority catholic and its city council is big on pushing the Derry name so I wouldn’t expect there to even be many grumpy old men acting in this way.
Generally if you hang out in decent areas with decent people then no matter their views they’re unlikely to get too upset one way or the other about a tourist saying the “wrong” word.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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