Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Who changed the names?

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Who changed the names?

Why do we, in the States at least, use different names for European cities. Why is Firenze Florence, Venezia Venice, Koln Cologne, Munchen Munich, Gand Ghent, Bale Basel. Perhaps the kind souls who explained why Suisse is CH can elucidate.

Richard, people are just using the name for the city in the local language .... in italian .. Firenze=Florence, Venezia=Venice, Roma=Rome; Milano=Milan; Napoli=Naples. Similarly, in german, Munchen=Munich and Koln=Cologne. I can't tell you why Americans would use the local language name when talking to other Americans. Personally, I use the American name when talking to Americans and the italian names when talking to italians.

We Americans are not the only ones who do this. The French call London, "Londres",England "Ingleterre", etc. And they say Leonardo DaVinci not with the Italian ch sound but as Leonardo Da-van-see. And of course, in Spanish, New York is Nueva York.

CH stands for "Conferation Helvetica."

Thank you! That has bugged me for years!

I can easily understand that names of cities are translated everywhere in the world but what to think about the crazy situation in Belgium, where I live. Belgium is a small country in Europe with a surface of only 30.500 km2 but we have 3 official languages: Dutch in the northern part (Vlaanderen), French in the southern part (la Wallonie) and German in the east province. This means that for example the city of Liège (situated in the French speaking part) is called "Lüttich" in the German speaking part and "Luik" in the Dutch speaking part. By the way, the official spelling of "Ghent" is Gent ; "Bruges" is Brugge, "Brussels" is an issue as it is situated in the centre of the country and thus officially biligual Dutch/French, so make your choice "Brussel" or "Bruxelles" !!!

Richard, One of the interesting phenomena you'll find in Brussels is the street signs in two languages, Flemish and Waloon. Offers wonderful opportunities to get lost! Switzerland is yet another country with multiple official languages that can give the inexperienced tourist fits. Should we stay is Basle (English), Basel (German) or Bale (French)? Should we look for Murten (German) on the map or Morat (French)?

I think it mainly comes down to what sounds right in a given language, what conventions have been established by that language's developers, what we identify with a given place (eg., West Indies), and sometimes to some long-ago explorer who thought that the native peoples were pronouncing something one way rather than the way they were actually pronouncing it. For instance, with Koln, there could be several reasons. C is rarely used in German compared to English, but in English we would likely use a C in this case. In German there is also an umlaut, or two periods above the o, and of course we don't use accent marks except with some words of foreign origin. You will notice that words will often be translated into English from German with "oe" replacing the "o" with umlaut. For example Hermann Goring (umlaut over "o") becomes Hermann Goering. It is pretty similar for countries too and also varies in other languages. For example, France becomes Frankreich (or Kingdom of the Franks) in German, whereas, Italy becomes Italien. Spain in English becomes l'Espagne in French or Spanien in German. Others: Chungwuo (Chinese for China - La Chine in French), Nippon for Japan. Sometimes names don't change but are just pronounced differently. Mexico, for example, is the same in Spanish and English but with different pronunciations - in both languages this word fits with conventional pronunciations. However, in French it becomes Le Mexique, as this is more fitting with French pronunciation. If I remember correctly, many train schedules will list cities according to the local language - for example, Vienna is Wien. I hope this confusingly worded diatribe helps some.

Thanks for the replies, travel is sure educational. This started because I was trying to find the drive time from Munich to Fussen. After many tries entering the origin and destination cities I realized euroshell.com is a Dutch site and so didn't recognize "Munich". I entered Munchen and bingo! My wife and I travel to Europe a couple of times a year, and tour on our bikes. This Spring we're touring the Rhine (Rhein) and Mosel (Moselle) valleys

Just a story - this reminds me of the first time we went to Denmark many years ago, after visiting other countries before. I thought I'd be able to figure out where everyone was from at this exhibition we attended from their names/address printed in the catalog. Entrants were from all over Europe. For the longest time, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Vest Tyskland was. Finally realized it was Danish for West Germany!

To stray a little from the topic, why do we Midwesterners pronounce Des Moines "da moyn" and "Des Plaines" "displanes?" Neither is right, of course.

And that lovely town in Missouri, pronounce VERR SAILS (Versailles, MO)

Elvira, I thought it was Vair-sigh!

The ultimate example is a town in Texas named after a early governor called Burnet. If you ask a local what's the name of the town, s/he'll say "BURN-it". If you ask the same person who the town is named after, s/he'll say "Governor Bur-NETT"

Just to add my 2 cents and follow up on Myriam's post, sometimes the linguistic wars within European countries can be deadly for the foreign motorist. I remember for instance trying to drive home from Brugge, hence looking for the direction of the French city of Lille. Couldn't find it, until I realised that our Flemish friends stuck to their appellation of "Rijsel"... quite a long way from "Lille" ! Same thing in Catalonia : if you are heading to Lerida, remember this is the name imposed by Madrid imperialists. Now it's called "LLeida" on Catalonian motorways !

John-- Elvira is right and you are wrong. Versailles, MO is called VERR-SAILS, not VAIR-SIGH. You must have confused it with the chateau in France!

Martha, you are right. I did have it confused with the one in France. Thank you

Same reason the good folks in Dubois, Wyoming will correct you in pronouncing their town name. To them it's DOO BOYS.

When I worked on London's overseas telephone exchange, we communicated the alphabet with universally known geographichal names when spelling out places to operators in other countries. E.g., a,b,c,d was Amsterdam, Baltimore, Casablanca, Denmark, etc. I'm not sure it is still used in international telephony--it's probably all computerized now. This "international alphabet" is used in other ways/jobs. Your question reminded me of it. Despite the many different pronuncations, we managed to cmmunicate clearly.