Now that the fighting in Lebanon has ended, at least for the
time being, what shall we call it? Israel’s five-week war with
Hizbullah does not have a name yet — or, rather, it has many,
none of which is clearly in the lead. Wars may take years, or
even decades, to get their permanent titles. World War I, for
instance, was widely known until 1939 as the Great War, a name
that had to be discarded when an even greater war broke out.
Similarly, the term American Civil War, although coming straight
out of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (“Now we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether [this] nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure”), did not gain much
currency until the early 20th century. When the North-South war
broke out in 1861, it was commonly referred to in the North as
the Rebellion and in the South as the War of Southern
Independence, and the most common name for it in the late 19th
century was the War Between the States. Other wars get instant
names that tend to stick: