I’ve ordered Peking duck, not Beijing duck, each time I’ve been in Beijing. A favorite place is Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, the branch just off the Wangfujing Dajie shopping street. The wall downstairs is lined with photos of famous people who have dined there such as Henry Kissinger.
In India, it’s quite common for the old “colonial” names to be used by locals. You will commonly hear Bombay, Banaras, Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore, etc., used instead of the proper names Mumbai, Varanasi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, etc.
The Hague is the English name for Den Haag, it’s a translation, not another name in Dutch. 's-Gravenhage (not s"Gravenhage) is another name in Dutch - the official name of the city, to be exact. Incidentally, Den Bosch/'s-Hertogenbosch, in the Catholic South, follows a similar pattern.
I was only aware of uncouth America, are you sure you’re right about this other America?
Sorry – what’s the Catholic connection here? (Nothing to do with Hieronymus, I presume.) Do Protestants call the town one thing, and Catholics another? I’m just interested…
No connection. Den Bosch is in the South, which is the traditionally more Catholic part of the country, below the large rivers.
Thanks. So, not like the city in Northern Ireland, as above. (Re that one, I gather that Ulster Protestants, now and in the past, tend / have tended – when not being politico-religiously intransigent, but just getting on with life – also to call the place Derry; just because “Londonderry” is a rather awkward mouthful.)
Donosti and Donostia are two different declensions of the Basque name, Iruña is also Basque, Lleida is Catalan. In fact, currently you’re not supposed to call any location in Catalonia by its Spanish name, there was a legal decision a couple of years back saying it all had to be Catalan only. Funny/weird thing is, since those whose primary language is Spanish aren’t allowed to use Spanish names, what’s happening is that they’re re-transliterating the Catalan. Where there used to be a place officially called Cerdanyola in Catalan and Cerdañola in Spanish (pronounced the same except for the “cer”, which is closer to “sær” in Catalan), now you get lots of people writing Sardañola…
Hear, or read? The two versions are attempts at transliterating the same sounds.
Hear—I’m talking mostly of spoken usage, not written. Indians don’t consider or treat them as the same sounds. They are all treated as different names, spelled and pronounced differently. It’s no different than saying “Rome” while speaking English and “Roma” while speaking Italian.
Residents of Calcutta, for example, will say “Calcutta” when speaking English—and pronounce it in the English way—and will say “Kolkata” when speaking Bengali, and pronounce it in the Bengali way.
Bombay/Mumbai and Banaras/Varanasi are entirely separate names in Hindi, with different pronunciations.
Chennai/Madras are obviously not an attempt to transliterate the same word.
No mention so far of Celtic Britain and Ireland save LlanfairPG?
Many towns in Wales and Ireland (and to a much lesser extent Scotland) have Celtic and Anglophone names. Some are near or less near transliterations; others are completely different, usually being the same idea in each language.
Swansea- Aberdare
Cardiff- Caerdydd
Barry- Y Barri
Anglesey- Ynys Mon
Brigend- Pen-y-bont
Usk- Brynbugga
Is getting into dual-language situations involving whole countries – with alternative names for all or most cities – maybe taking things in the thread, to a new level?
I’m going to be annoyingly nitpicky-correctional here, and mention that the Welsh name for Swansea is actually Abertawe. Aberdare (Welsh Aberdâr) is a – smaller – town in its own right, about 25 miles east of Swansea.
In the matter of two-language countries: Belgium, with its Flemish / French language division, has a Flemish and a French name for nearly every town of any size – obviously, the form more often used, is that in the language of the area of the country where the place is located. I gather that the only major exception is Charleroi, in the French-speaking south: that city has no Flemish name.
I would imagine that the same obtains at least to some extent in Switzerland, with its four official languages. I know that the capital is Bern (German), or Berne (French); and “the city at the far-western end, on the lake”, is respectively Genf, and Genève.
I also question that. Not only is the City of London not unique in political status among other parts of London in that city’s somewhat complicated organization, but it also muddies the waters to compare it to Brooklyn which is in a limited way also a separate political entity. It’s been a borough of New York City since 1898, before which it was a separate city, but it’s still a separate county of New York State. Each of the five boroughs of NYC is: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Bronx and Richmond (Staten Island) counties. Each still has certain county government functions, like the prosecutor’s office.
Seoul was called Hanseong (as it would be transliterated now), Chinese for ‘Han (river) fort’ in the Joseon dynasty period, among several other names historically for the same city. It’s not been commonly called that in Korea since Seoul was adopted as exclusive name after independence from Japan, but Chinese were long in the habit of still writing it as 漢城, and using their pronunciation of those characters to say it (Hànchéng), since Seoul has no direct Chinese character equivalent (rare for place names in Korea). But more recently at Korean request Chinese media for example have adopted the practice of writing ‘Seoul’ with two characters (首爾) whose Mandarin pronunciation sounds like ‘Seoul’, though they don’t have a related meaning. Ordinary Chinese though will still call it Hancheng.
In the other direction Koreans sometimes write Chinese (or Japanese) place names by their Chinese characters, in which case the pronunciation will differ from what Chinese or Japanese say. But again it’s become media etiquette to write the names in the Korean alphabet according to their Chinese/Japanese pronunciations, or along with the characters in parentheses. Same with Chinese people’s names. So for example Koreans now are more likely to call Beijing 베징 and say ‘be-jing’ but if you say in Korean 북경, bukgyeong, the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters for Beijing, 北京, ‘north capital’, people will also understand what you’re referring to.
Some cities in the American Southwest have very long ceremonial names, and much shorter call names. A couple:
Las Cruces, New Mexico - El Pueblo del Jardín de Las Cruces
Santa Fe, New Mexico - La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís
In a Christian religious context. I guess some Greeks and Eastern Orthodox believers (as well as anyone trying to make a polemical religious point) might use ‘Constantinople’ in a secular context as well.
In Madagascar the Malagasy names are used in ‘official’ contexts, but the French or Frenchified names are used in colloquial contexts (e.g. Fort-Dauphin vs. Tolanaro, etc.).
Indians often still refer to ‘Madras’, ‘Bombay’, etc…
Forgive what may be a dumb question:
In countries like Switzerland or India, countries that have multiple official languages, do some cities have multiple names?
Does EVERYONE in Switzerland use the standard names Zurich, Lucerne and Geneva, or do some Swiss have other names for those cities?
I know that road signs in Ireland always feature both the English and Gaelic names of each city (“Cill Airne” for Killlarney, “Luimneach” for Limerick, “Port Lairge” for Waterford, et al), even though very few Irish are fluent in Gaelic any more.
All those cities have different names in multiple languages.
Geneva, for example, is Genf in German and Genève in French. Whether more than one of those versions are considered “official” is dependent on local and national law and politics.
Taumata whaka tangi hanga koauau o tamatea turi pukakapi ki maunga horo nuku poka i whenua kitana tahu, in New Zealand, translates as the ‘place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as land-eater, played his flute to his loved one’.
But locals just call it ‘Taumata’.
The relevant Wiki piece (Google “Taumata, NZ”) claims that there are yet-longer versions of this place’s name – the above, a mere 85 letters. Longest rendering, numbers 105 letters – am not going to try to reproduce the Maori text, but translation of same is given as, “The hill of the flute-playing by Tamatea – who was blown hither from afar, had a circumcised penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land – to his beloved”.
Please reassure me that New Zealand’s rail network never reached this place and set up a station there…
In Australia, the city of Wagga Wagga is always called just Wagga (pronounced ‘Wogga’). Although it is an abbreviation, I have never heard anyone refer to it by the full double-barreled name.
Confusingly, almost every other ‘repeat’ name in Australia - Woy Woy, Grong Grong, Bong Bong, Mullum Mullum, Gin Gin, Terrick Tererick, Gol Gol (I’m not making any of these up, and there’s a lot more) - will be called by its full name.
But not Wagga.