City names and English vs other languages

I don't how J turned into K though. B & P at least are close.

xpost

'Cause we already had burgs in English.

I think there are several things at play, here.

Until relatively recently, Europeans were not that cosmolitan in their use of names for foreign things, places and countries. They tended to deform them to fit the pronunciation trends of their own languages to make them easier to say for their own population. The vocabulary shared by French and English, especially between Middle French and Middle English is enormous due to the presence of a Norman French aristocracy and Royal family who were also, often nobles in France. So the fact that we say Venice and the French say Venise probably stems from the fact that they were once spoken and written relatively similarly. We say Rome just as the French would because the linguistic tendancy of French is to suppress final 'o' and 'a' sounds. Similarly, Italian refers to London as Londra. I am inclined to think that, since England was seen as being on the periphery of the French-speaking world by Italians, they adopted the french name but italicized it by adding an 'a' sound that made it sound more normal to their ears. I think Parigi is a corruption along typical Italian linguistic lines of the name of the stone age tribe that lived there, the Parisii, who, incidentally are believed to be related to a Celtic tribe who lived in East Yorkshire and Humberside of all places.

How we ended up with Leghorn for Livorno is totally beyond me.

I knew someone who got on a train in Rome for 'Monaco', fell asleep in a 2nd class compartment and was freaked when they awoke in Germany.

I think most, if not all, of the Italian cities that we use an anglicised name for are pretty old. In some of these cases the name we use (eg Naples, Venice, Florence) is much closer to the original Latin name than the modern Italian equivalent (Napoli, Venezia, Firenze), and we've used those names for a long time, so it's more a case of the Italians changing the names of the cities over several hundreds of years than us suddenly dreaming up new names for them.

(arse - this is soooooo xpost now it's irrelevant)

(And, while I'm at it, I point blank refuse to call Racing Club (of Montevideo), Rahhhhhhseeeeeeeng Cloooooooooooooob.)

"lows awn hell ess" vs. "loss ann juh less"

Nueva Orleans, Nuevo México, etc.
Carolina del Norte, etc.
Distrito de Columbia
also see "La Gran Manzana"

The only reason I can think of is that English & French speakers find umlauts equally difficult, and so change the name.

What do French people call Munchen/Munich?

In Spy School one of the lecturers was talking about the hilarious names Germans give to various Polish cities.

???

ahhhh, that makes sense then. Was it perhaps a Roman town in Germania Inferior?

Chee-ca-go vs Shi-ca-go

Britain has a similar issue itself, of course. Who here has heard of Abertawe, the second city of Wales?

Languages become associated to right-left wing trends according to historical moments-see Madchen´s Calcutta

My favourite is Aachen (German), Aix-la-Chapelle (French), Aquisgran (Spanish), Aig (?-Dutch). When I was invited to go to Aachen and told it was a gem of Medieval architecture, and centre to Carolingian empire I felt so unliterate. Thanks God I learnt it was Aquisgran when I got there!

(and another one i've never understood, although it's not about cities : we pronounce "FBI" the american way...but say "CIA" like it's french initials ! silly, huh ?).

This probably deserves a poll

Oh that's another reason for corruption, who you met first. The Brits (or rather the Portugese) were probably trqading with Cantonese traders on the QT long before they got to Northern China so by the time they actually got to Beijing, they'd known it as Peking for years.

Actually the Chinese in Beijing used to pronounce the last syllable as 'king,' too, there was just a sound change in Chinese that we didn't pay attention to for a while.

peapack, nj was robbed

re: the article, 'worst' obviously very subjective, I think all these town names are completely awesome. I'm shocked there's actually a "Boogertown."

I've just noticed Sky News is using Braunschweig for Brunswick. Why, I wonder?

I thought it was more commonly known as Braunschweig than Brunswick now, but may be wrong

Vienna is Beč in Croatian, which is a puzzle

(xp) It's possible, though I've never noticed it before and I suppose that's because Braunschweig/ Brunswick is not as important as it once was.

I've always thought of it as Braunschweig, though the Bundesliga likely plays a role in that, which throws up its own weirdness where Munich feels entrenched but Cologne feels weird

Though that also throws up its own quirks with Sporting Lisbon and Arsenal London

I've just noticed Sky News is using Braunschweig for Brunswick. Why, I wonder?

The German version of Braunschweig has been encouraged in English for some time now - see, for example, the Study in Germany website. Ironically, however, the English version of the city's website contains articles that vary between the two versions of the name. The banner at the top of the page says 'Welcome to Brunswick', but the (automatically generated?) translations of the site's articles use Braunschweig more often than not.

See also Braunschweig's neighbouring city of 'Hannover', which is written with two 'n's in English to match the German version of its name, superseding the older English spelling of 'Hanover'.

The same holds true for pronunciations. I once taught someone who worked for the Basel tourist board, and they use the two-syllable German pronunciation with English-speaking tourists, as opposed to the monosyllabic 'Baal' that used to be preferred in English.

Which is the French version of Basel I assume.

Yes, exactly. Nomenclature is an imprecise science in multilingual Switzerland, where the French name 'Lucerne' is still preferred in English documentation to 'Luzern', even though the city is in the German-speaking region of the country.

As for the continued usage of Cologne, Nuremberg and Munich in English (instead of Köln, Nürnberg and München), I think that the unspoken assumption is that English speakers would struggle with (or just ignore) the accented vowels, as well as the soft 'ch' in München, and so the Anglicised versions still prevail.

Lidl also struggled with vowels when they first set up shop in the UK. The early advertising for its British supermarkets had the German pronunciation (i.e. with a long 'i' in the first syllable), but now they've given up and just call themselves 'Liddell'. As the Angelic Upstarts once sang: 'Who killed Lidl? Did you kill Lidl?'

I can't remember but when they were in the Europa League I feel like they were titled as Koln in English not Cologne, but obviously Bayern always has the anglicised version

And as you pointed out, German sports journalists have problems of their own with the names of overseas football clubs. You still find isolated instances of 'Arsenal London' (see the headline of this recent Frankenpost article). The magazine kicker was still using the often insensitive German names for European cities much later than they should have been - 'Slovan Preßburg' instead of 'Slovan Bratislava', for example - although this is now thankfully a thing of the past.

As for the continued usage of Cologne, Nuremberg and Munich in English (instead of Köln, Nürnberg and München), I think that the unspoken assumption is that English speakers would struggle with (or just ignore) the accented vowels, as well as the soft 'ch' in München, and so the Anglicised versions still prevail.

That's possibly true but Cologne and Munich are such well known cities that I can't see a switch to the German spellings and pronunciation happening any time soon. I don't see the problem with this generally - except when it has some dubious history behind it!

(By the way I was shockingly old when I found out Aachen and Aix-la-Chapelle are the same place!)

Agreed. If Munich can put up with Italians calling the city Monaco (di Baviera), with predictable consequences, then I'm sure that they'll put up with the English name of Munich for a while yet. See also the Italian names of German places such as Francoforte, Amburgo, Lipsia (Leipzig). Aquisgrana (Aachen), Magonza (Mainz), Treviri (Trier) etc.

I think it might happen with Koln (I thought maybe it did with the football but they are infrequent visitors to Europe so maybe misremembered) but not Munich

It happened with Kyiv! And Chennai

I seem to be seeing Köln more often in US publications, eg https://beerandbrewing.com/brewing-traditions-where-kolsch-night-is-every-night/

When I lived in a Spanish-speaking country, I often had to do a double translation to figure out some foreign city names.

A personal favorite is what the Germans call Milan: Mailand.

Since you already brought up Switzerland, I can confirm we have French and German versions for most of them. For example, Neuchâtel/Neuenburg, Coire/Chur, Bienne/Biel, Soleure/Solothurn, Genève/Genf. The name of our main lakes changes: Lake Geneva is known as Genfersee in German, but in French we say le Léman / Lac Léman. The German Bodensee is known as Lac de Constance. Smaller places can be fun too. Try saying Kerzers (Chiètres in French) or Düdingen (Guin), two places close to me. It can be confusing to know which one must become the English version and sometimes it's a third thing, Lake Lucerne for example is only known to us as a mouthful: le Lac des Quatre-Cantons / Vierwaldstättersee.

A small territory with complicated linguistic borders is an obvious factor. Internationally, I guess French imperialism.

Speaking of Mailand, is Nizza on here yet?

If so, I would say Nizza otm.

also I thought there urban legends built up around the Monaco/Munich thing but I guess something was bound to go wrong sooner or later

Because Londres has been the French word for London for eons and up until recently, they didn't know Birmingham existed.

Must have been the dry ice factory that put it on the map.

Edimbourg for Edinburgh.

That's interesting!

Edimburgo and Plimude in Portuguese

https://i.imgur.com/Q5Cr6vG.png

Embra

The Basque Country is rife with these, Donostia / San Sebastián being the most notable.