SIENA is the correct spelling of the place in Tuscany
 

Sorry. This place is dear to my heart and I've seen it spelled Sienna too many times.

What do you like most about Seeanna?

I think it gets spelled with two "n"s so often because too many people think it rhymes with Vienna.

See-yay-nuh...

In Spay-nuh, the ray-nuh falls mainly on the play-nuh..

Best wishes,

Rex

carolw, if I had a dollar for every time I have resisted the urge to correct the spelling of this delightful town, I could be writing this FROM Siena. :-D

The color is spelled with 2 "n's" and there is a car spelled with 2 "n's" so perhaps that is why the confusion occurs.

It's not cyanuh?

Marilyn,
I agree with you that the color and the car probably cause the confusion.
Whatever the spelling, Siena is a beautiful town!

I never heard of the car until many decades after I was familiar with the city. Are there really so many artists who have the name of the color sienna, burnt or otherwise, burned into their consciousness so that it interferes with their spelling of the city of Siena? It's funny, but I have to hesitate when spelling the color, because the name of the city Siena tends to jump into my mind on the very very rare occasions when I need to write the name of the color sienna.

AMEN, Carol.

Now, if we could attend to the proper spelling of itinerary and accommodations and restaurateurs (even those who claim to be them).....

And while we're at it, we can fix the Brugge thing, too

Who says?

Siena is the correct spelling if you're speaking Italian, these days. It hasn't always been the case even in Italian ('burnt sienna' isn't a mistake, but is a straight rendering of 'terra di Sienna'.)

But we're not speaking Italian. We're speaking English, which doesn't have rules about this kind of thing - and certainly doesn't have a rule that we follow foreigners'spellings. And, for most of the past 500 years, English has tolerated both spellings.

Admittedly, most good English these days uses Siena. But it was the convention throughout the 19th century, for example, to refer to most of the local saints as "St x of Sienna".

If you want to have a go at gross solecisms, take aim at the use of downright illiteracies like 'Roma', 'Milano', 'Firenze' and 'Venezia' etc.

For the major cities, English is quite clear. Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples. Only Leghorn (aka Livorno) has now become obsolete.

But the real example of self-revealing ignorance is the silly fad (which seems to be peculiar to posters on this board) of describing that pretty Belgian city as 'Brugge'.

The English is Bruges. Totally without question. Any other spelling is quite without foundation.

Well, cmt, before I ever dreamed of Italy, I had lots of crayons. And in those big boxes with 64 or 96 or 128 colors, there was always burnt sienna. I think I remember a news item when Crayola changed the color assortment and eliminated burnt sienna, so maybe it's a generational thing, but there are indeed many people, artists or otherwise, with burnt sienna burnt into the brain.

Ah, Nikki, brilliant! That's it, of course -- crayons!

flanneruk, what is your source for the rules for place names written or spoken as they are in English vs their native language? I'm not arguing the point; I'm just curious. I have a friend who always corrects me when I pronouce place names with "San" or "Santa" in the English way rather than in the Spanish way.

Re: Brugge/Bruges
Bruges is actually the French spelling of Brugge which is in Flanders. I prefer Brugge, the Flemish spelling.

So Brugge is "quite without foundation"? Tell that to the Flemish-speakers who live in the Flemish city.

Not just here, but Toyota is doing it as well. Maybe they just think the spelling looks better...or else they're afraid of a copyright lawsuit from the city. :)

Not to be outdone in the misspelling-of Italian-cities-for-vehicles contest, Kia has come up with Sorento.

I looked into this further, asking some Italian acquaintances. It seems that "sienna" was NOT the original spelling or either the city or the pigment. The city's ancient history is Etruscan. It was an Etruscan settlement called Sena. The Romans called it Saena Etruriae. The Seina tribe that settled it was called Gens Saenius by the Romans.

My Italian acquaintances also said that the name of the pigment was always called "terra di siena" (not "terra di sienna"). So I don't when and why the extra "n" came on the scene. Maybe it was a short-lived medieval variation of the spelling, or a foreign (i.e. non-Italian) spelling.

Re: crayons. I used to love them passionately when I was 3, 4, 5, 6. Plain old pencils, and crayons, and paper, and a little corner of a table, and I could be content for hours every single day--better than TV or jumping rope or reading or anything. But my crayons rarely had the paper labels with the name. I don't know how I managed to have so many crayons, but none of them new. I know they had a hisotry, but I never knew what it was. Since I was an only child, I don't know how they could've been hand-me-downs, unless they were from my mother's childhood. But I loved all of them--the new ones and the old ones, the untouched long ones and the tiny leftover stubs, the densely colored good quality ones and the cheapie translucent ones that were mostly wax, the sweet-smelling Crayola and the ancient odd ones that smelled of decades of mildew. I don't think I learned the names of all the various tans and browns and reddish browns--sienna, ochre, etc. until I was in my 20s and decided that I loved to draw with Conte crayons (hard chalky) on huge newsprint pads or with Prismacolor pencils in various shades of brown on smaller, better quality paper pads. By that time, I knew all about Siena!

Here's (highlighted) a list of current and historical names for Siena. "Siena" has been the normal name since the 13th century. It appears that "Sienna" is just an atypical modern spelling. http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...enna&hl=en

P.S. Another brown drawing pencil I used to use was "umber"--both burnt and raw. ("Terra di ombra," possibly named after Umbria region?)

Spellings didn't matter much in the 13th century as very few people could read or write. Spelling is much more important now if you're using the internet: if you search for information on a place and you get the name wrong, then you won't find the information you want.
English versions of place names are fine if you merely want to read about foreign places, but if you actually want to visit foreign places, you need to know their real names. Italian road signs and railway timetables will show Livorno not "Leghorn", or Firenze not "Florence".

P.S. I think the url I tried to post above will work if you replace the silly smiley face with a colon : followed by upper case letter p. It's very annoying that these emoticons pop in when I'm trying to type normal text.

I think it's important to distinguish between what a place is called by the native speakers and what we call it in English.

In the case of Brugge/Bruges, for example, Bruges has long been the English name, just as we say Ghent instead of Gent (Flemish) or Gand (French). So if JMM prefers to say Brugge, that's fine. I do hope, however, that he/she pronounces the "g" with the proper Flemish pronunciation, and also eschews the use of "Ghent" for "Gent", once again with the proper "g" sound.

I would also expect those who want to use the "real" name to use Köln, München, and Nürnburg, und so weiter...

Whatever one uses, it is important, as GeoffHamer pointed out, to know the local name when travelling. I learned this many years ago when driving from Germany (sorry, Bundesrepublik Deutschland) into Belgium/Belgie/Belgique. The signs on the autobahn all pointed to a place called Lüttich, then Luik, and finally Liège. I almost missed my turn for Antwerp (Antwerpen) because in Liège, all the signs pointed to Anvers. And unless you're in Brussels/Brussel/Bruxelles or Wallonia, try finding a roadsign for Mons--they all point to Bergen.