The New York town of Swastika votes to keep its name

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The New York town of Swastika votes to keep its name​

(CNN)A small town in upstate New York voted to keep the name Swastika, saying that the town founders named it after the Sanskrit word and not the hate symbol associated with Nazis.

The Town of Black Brook town board, which has domain over the hamlet, voted unanimously to not change the name, Jon Douglass, supervisor for the Town of Black Brook, told CNN.

Swastika was named by the town’s original settlers in the 1800s and is based off the Sanskrit word meaning “well-being,” according to Douglass.

“We regret that individuals, for out of the area, that lack the knowledge of the history of our community become offended when they see the name,” Douglass said. “To the members of our community, that the board represents, it is the name that their ancestors chose.”

The vote follows a national reckoning with what the symbol means in modern America.

In April 2019, a neighborhood in a town outside Denver, Colorado voted to change its name from Swastika Acres to Old Cherry Hills. The area had once been home to the Denver Land Swastika Company, a company that chose its name before Nazis adopted the swastika symbol.

The term swastika is derived from the Sanskrit word “svastika,” which means “good fortune,” according to the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum. The symbol first appeared about 7,000 years ago, and is considered a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other belief systems. It sometimes adorns the walls of houses or temples.

The symbol became popular in Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century, in part as Europeans learned about ancient civilizations through the work of archaeological excavations.

The Nazi Party adopted the hooked cross as its symbol in 1920 during a time when other far-right nationalist movements in Europe were also beginning to use it, the museum says.
 
Time to take it back.
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Absolutely no chance of that in the next few generations. I don’t think it matters whether or not this town changes its name though.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
Absolutely no chance of that in the next few generations.
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Once symbols are tainted with a bad history, it’s kind of hard to reclaim them. Given that even now we’ve seen people use it as a symbol for hateful things in the USA that history is only growing longer. I’ve seen instances of the symbol in some eastern countries .When I’ve seen it there I’ve just though it was a symbol for the Jains or some similar religion. But they have a different history with the symbol than do many of the European countries of the USA.

But I imagine since a city doesn’t move around, most of the people likely to encounter it are already familiar with it. For entities that move around I could see this being more problematic. Ever heard of the Hockey team “The Windsor Swastikas?”

Kind of off-topic, but I was a little surprised to see there are Unicode symbols for both the clockwise and anti-clockwise swastikas.
 
I’ve never heard of Swastika NY.

So far I thought Intercourse, PA was the strangest town name.
 
You’ve never heard of Hell, Michigan, Purgatory, Colorado or Boring, Oregon?

I think Boring, Oregon is a sister city of Dull, England.
 
I guess I did. I just had the PA town in my mind for a non Freudian reason.
 
Thanks to circumstances, I not only ran into GA stuff, I ran into GA people.
 
Would you go ahead and smash this Hindu temple because it’s got a swastika?
Or would you rather leave it alone because the Nazis stole this symbol from them?
(I’m not endorsing the idolatrous Hindu religion, however)
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I think the city should change the name, just like Squaw Valley changed its name. Police in one southwest town in one squad got tattoos of double lightning bolts which looked just like the SS symbol. After objections, they cut that stuff out.

In IL the town of Pekin had a high school team nickname which was an ethnic slur. It took decades for them to change it to the ‘Fighting Dragons’. Folks needs to let some things go.
 
Good on them for not being strongarmed into changing their historic name that was taken in good faith, just because some foreign bully decided to use it.
 
I’m delighted to see this, we’ve given far too much power to the german nazi usage of the symbol. Let it fade away.

I once had a set of brass Buddhist candle holders with Sanskrit swastikas as a base. Elegant and beautiful, but no longer sellable because of persistent Nazi paranoia.
 
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In Buddhism, the swastika symbolizes the auspicious footprints of Buddha.

I’m sure there are also Buddhist temples with that ancient symbol.

A pity that the common person thinks that the Nazis invented the Swastika.
 
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