names of wars

Why is it that in the names of many wars, the loser is listed first (i.e. Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, Franco-Prussian War)?

My guess would be that it is coincidence based on a readily avaiable (and familiar–at least to pundits and historians) prefix combining form for for the country that happened to be listed first.

I think its just that the shorter name goes first becuase it sounds better.

The Spanish-American War and the French and Indian War (better known as the North American theater in the Seven Years War) also follow this pattern.

How about the Arab-Israeli wars? Sort of breaks the pattern.

My guess is that the shorter name goes first. It’s easier to say that way.

Ok, ignore my last post.

While we’re on the subject, why do we refer to the latest war in Iraq (leaving out the administration’s marketing of “Operation FreeDom&Liberty4Ever” as a brand name [don’t you have a t-shirt?]) as the “Second Persian Gulf War”. Even just taking recent history into account, it is clearly and quite obviously the Third Persian Gulf War.
Sorry, its just a pet peeve of mine.

I disagree, as it has no relation to the first Persian Gulf War (plus, most of it took place far away from the actual Persian Gulf). The correct title would be the “Second Iraqi-American War”, if the presence of allies didn’t complicate matters.

Maybe we should just call it the “Second Iraqi War.”

I’m not sure that the Second Gulf War is going to stick as the name of the current conflict. It seems to get a lot less use then then calling the '91 war the “Persian Gulf War” did. I think this is partly because this war is less of a rigional conflict then the '91 war, which involved two gulf states as combatants (Kuwait and Iraq, with missles being fired into Saudi Arabia) and where several other Gulf States were part of the allied effort. The current conflict has been much more localized within Iraqi boarders, and most of the major allies were who provided military support (as opposed to bases) wereUS/European countries located far from the Gulf.

As to the OP, let’s do the numbers. Here is a listing of wars fought between 1900-1945. I count fourteen that use the naming convention mentioned by the OP (“somecountry/ethnic group”-“other country/group”). Of these I count 6 where the winner was listed first, four where the looser was listed first and four where I don’t know enough history to tell who the winner was (I also discount the Second Sino-Japanese war which I think the Chinese won but that the OP seems to count a Japanese victory). If we consider 1900-1945 representitive, I’d say the OP’s thesis is incorrect.

I’ve been challenging the notion that there have been two distinct US (and UK)-Iraq wars for some time now. There was an uninterrupted rough decade in between the two major peaks of battle in which the US & UK bombed a location within Iraq on average once every 3 days (even though it wasn’t making the news much anymore) and during which time Iraq was under sanctions (sanctions and blockades themselves considered acts of war) which killed many times more Iraqis than the bombing has. The central Iraqi government also took actions against rebel populations in this period. And the US and UK had control of “no fly zones” in this period, which was sometimes enforced by force; contrary to popular perception, these were not UN-sanctioned.

I think in the future historians will consider this one long war - in fact, one of America’s longest.

Good point about it being a broad regional conflict.

The Iraqis actually invaded Saudi Arabia (the Battle of Khafji), which meant there was a ground war in three countries SA, Iraq, Kuwait). In addition to firing missles into Saudi Arabia, they also fired them into Israel.

The French and the Indians were on the same side. The victors (the British) are not even part of the nomenclature.

The French and Indian War doesn’t, since they were both on the same side against the British (most of the Indians except for the Iroquois being allied with the French). It would have to be the Franco-Indian-British War to qualify.

That isn’t confusing because the only people to use the name “French and Indian” were the American colonists. It was just a sideshow of the Seven Years’ War, interesting but not really relevant to the outcome any more than the UK-Germany fighting in east Africa mattered to WW1.

I go with the euphony argument, in general.