State Administration Minister Nikolai Vassilev is currently in Brussels to try to persuade the European Central Bank that "euro" in Bulgarian is evro.

For several years, this has been the only way that eight million Bulgarians have pronounced and written the name of the single European currency. Evro came naturally in Bulgarian. We say Evropa for Europe, Evgeni for Eugene, evtanazia for euthanasia, etc. But the Central Bank though insists that "euro" in Bulgarian should be written and therefore pronounced in a way that looks quite strange to us.

In the Accession Treaty "euro" is mentioned many times, and happily in the Bulgarian version it is always evro (EBPO). Should we modify the Treaty because of the linguists from the Central Bank? We hope not.

By the way, in Greek "euro" is also pronounced evro, which is written with Greek characters looking like the Latin "EYPO". If the writing for euro appears in Latin and Greek in capital letters on the Euro notes, the same must be true for Bulgarian. Then there will be a new name added in Cyrillic on the future notes, similar to the Latin letters "EBPO".

If the reasoning of the European Central Bank would be not to add Bulgarian characters and accept the Greek EYPO as the Bulgarian name for Euro, it must be said that the way that the letter Y (ypsilon) is written in Greek is quite different from the Cyrillic way the letter O (u) is written.

More important, Bulgarians will keep pronouncing Evro no matter what writing for euro in Bulgarian will be finally accepted.

By the way, in English euro is pronounced "yuro". In German it is "oyro". Why not have a nice euro sign instead of the four letters and let every people on Earth pronounce it according to their linguistic traditions?
 
Georgi Gotev
Head of Bulgaria in EU Press Centre
The opinion of the author is personal and does not reflect any official views