San Serriffe is a fictional

island nation An island country, island state, or island nation is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands. Approximately 25% of all independent countries are island countries. Island countries are historically ...

invented for

April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day (rarely called All Fools' Day) is an annual custom on the 1st of April consisting of practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fool " at the recipient. ...

1977 by Britain's ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' newspaper.''

'
Special Report: San Serriffe.
1 April 1977 It was featured in a seven-page

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

supplement, published in the style of contemporary reviews of foreign countries. It commemorated the tenth anniversary of the island's independence, complete with themed advertisements from major companies. The supplement provided an elaborate description of the nation as a tourist destination and developing economy, but most of its place names and characters were puns and plays on words relating to printing (such as "

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

" and names of common

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

s). The original idea was to place the island in the Atlantic Ocean near

Tenerife Tenerife ( ; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands, an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain. With a land area of and a population of 965,575 inhabitants as of A ...

, but because of the ground collision of two Boeing 747s there, a few days before publication it was moved to the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

, near the

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Seychellois Creole: ), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 155 islands (as per the Constitution) in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, ...

islands. Because of this, the authors made San Serriffe a moving islanda combination of

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of Wind wave, waves, Ocean current, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts ...

on its west side and deposition on the east cause it to move towards

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

, with which it will eventually collide. San Serriffe was one of the most famous and successful hoaxes of the 20th century; it has become part of the common

cultural heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by socie ...

of literary humour, and a secondary body of literature has been derived from it. The nation was reused for similar hoaxes in 1978, 1980 and 1999. In April 2009, the geography, history and culture of San Serriffe featured heavily in ''The Guardian''

cryptic crossword A cryptic crossword is a crossword, crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, as well as Ireland, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth ...

Background

The idea for the hoax came from ''The Guardians Special Reports Manager Philip Davies. In a 2007 interview, he said "The ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'' was always doing special reports on little countries I'd never heard of. I was thinking about April Fool's Day 1977 and I thought, why don't we just make a country up?" Special Reports editor Stuart St Clair Legge suggested the name San Serriffe.Wainwright, p68 Geoffrey Taylor designed the

semicolon The semicolon (or semi-colon) is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as ...

-shaped map of the island, based on a shrunken version of

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. Initially, the supplement featuring the fictitious

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

was to be a single page. The newspaper then realised that a larger review would generate greater revenue by running themed advertising alongside the text. These included a request for submissions to a photography competition sponsored by

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

: "If you've got a photograph of San Serriffe, Kodak would like to see it."

Reception

In an era before the widespread use of

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

and

word processing A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicate ...

software, much of the terminology was little-known, the jokes were easily missed, and many readers were fooled. Many others recognised the joke and became part of it. ''The Guardian'' received hundreds of letters from readers describing memorable holidays to the islands. It also received a letter from the "San Serriffe Liberation Front" critical of the pro-government slant to the supplement.Wainwright, p74 Editor

Peter Preston Peter John Preston (23 May 1938 – 6 January 2018) was a British journalist and author. He was editor of ''The Guardian'' for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Early life Peter Preston was born in Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, the son of ...

received letters of complaint from airlines and travel agents due to the disruption caused by customers who refused to believe the islands did not exist.

Legacy

A large body of secondary work about San Serriffe has been written since 1977. A Friends of San Serriffe club was established, with its "life president" writing annual April Fools' Day letters to the paper. Bird & Bull Press published several books about esoteric subjects relating to the country, including ''Booksellers of San Serriffe'', ''First Fine Silver Coinage of the Republic of San Serriffe'' and ''The World's Worst Marbled Papers''.

Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of comp ...

offers a reward to anyone finding a mistake in one of his publications; from October 2008 onwards, this has been in the form of a "certificate of deposit" from the fictitious ''Bank of San Serriffe''.

References

Sources

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External links