A blank map of Greece to train your geography skills with.
Did I catch your attention with this strange way of writing Rick Latona’s name?
I should have, because although “Ryck Latowna” sounds a lot like “Rick Latona”, it surely looks way out of place. Rick would never write his name as “Ryck Latowna”.
In the same sense, you’d never confuse Richard Svartz – a graphic designer from Sweden – for “Rick Schwartz”.
Rick Latona’s ongoing auctions contain a lot of quality domains.
There’s Hospitals.net, FoolsGold.com, Handgun.net and a list of rum, gin and vodka compound dot coms. Lovely so far.
There are also several names listed as Greek geo domains, with a starting price of only $49 or $50 dollars. But why could the price be so low?
When transcribing Greek city names into English, there is a phonetic way of writing things and there is an official way.
There’s also the Wikipedia way, which means that old, obsolete or archaic ways of writing the name of a Greek city are simply redirected to the official name.
And that’s where the reference to “Ryck Latowna” comes into play.
To a Greek native, an archaic way of transcribing a city name in English surely looks strange and alien.
It’s also inaccurate and essentially a bad typo. Let’s take a look at those names:
- Koridhallos.com & Korydalos.com – Current name is Korydallos.
- Kholargos.com – Current name is Holargos.
- Khalandrion.com – Proper name is Halandri.
- Keratsiniun.com – Proper name is Keratsini.
- Kardhitsa.com – The correct writing is Karditsa.
- Galatsion.com – Current name is Galatsi.
- Edhessa.com – Official name is Edessa.
- Koropion.com – Proper name is Koropi.
- NeaErithraia.com – Correct name is Nea Erythraia.
Rick owns Rhodes.com which is the proper spelling for the anglicized name of the Greek island of Rodos. That’s exactly why the official city web site resides both at Rhodes.gr and Rodos.gr.
Rick wants $350,000 for Rhodes.com and that’s the price difference between official names and geo typos.
