Sep. 27th, 2007

undyingking: (Default)
I've often wondered about the accidents of history that have meant that some Western European cities have different names in English. Why do we call Paris Paris, Berlin Berlin, but Roma Rome and München Munich? Maybe there's an interesting story behind each one... It seems curious that in each country there are generally only a few places, or often just one, that we call by different names, while most of them we're perfectly happy to use the real names. It's as though the curve of increasing standardization of English intersects the curve of growing familiarity with distant places at a different point for each country.

And Italy seems to have suffered disproportionately.

These are the ones that sprung to my mind, I'm sure I've missed some (do say if so) though:
  • Portugal
    • Lisboa -> Lisbon
  • Spain
    • I can't think of any Spanish cities that we call by the wrong names, can you? Why should that be?
  • France
    • Marseille -> Marseilles -- this might actually be a change in the French name, I don't know...
    • Lyon -> Lyons
  • Belgium
    • Brussel / Bruxelles -> Brussels
  • Netherlands
    • Den Haag -> The Hague
  • Sweden
    • Göteborg -> Gothenburg
  • Denmark
    • København -> Copenhagen
  • Germany
    • München -> Munich
    • Köln -> Cologne
  • Austria
    • Wien -> Vienna
  • Italy
    • Roma -> Rome
    • Firenze -> Florence
    • Napoli -> Naples
    • Milano -> Milan
    • Torino -> Turin
    • Genova -> Genoa
    • Venezia -> Venice -- and probably loads more

Although Italy also furnished the only example I can think of of an English name that has fallen into disuse. We used to call Livorno -> Leghorn, but for some reason stopped doing so -- it now only survives in the name of the breed of chicken.

Those of you who speak foreign, do Europeans have diferent names for British cities? I know the French call London Londres, and the Italians Londra, but are there more such?

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undyingking

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