For instance we say Paris, France or Cairo, Egypt or Philadelphia, United States.
Did they say Vienna, Austria-Hungary and Budapest, Austria-Hungary or did they keep the terms national and say “Vienna, Austria” and “Budapest, Hungary.” Even though it was a dual monarchy?
Who says these? The most important cities with these names don’t usually require qualifiers. Do newspapers or TV news reporters in the US actually print/say ‘Paris, France’?
For what it’s worth the New York Times used to just print ‘Vienna’ if the story originated there without referring to the Empire.
I have census records for some of my Austro-Hungarian ancestors…they immigrated in the 1870s. Their country of origin was listed only as “Hungary” (though they spoke German and their town would end up in post WWI Austria later)…so I presume that for practical purposes, Austria and Hungrary were considered two nations who happened to share the same ruler.
Austria-Hungary was an Empire; empires by definition contain one or more distinct nations. How the official record was, I don’t know (and it might depend on who and where and for what purpose), but internally they recognized a distinction between Austria and Hungary.
I find qualifying things like that is a bit of an Americanism. In America towns are usually qualified by their state names so you say “Rome, Ohio” or “Springfield, Illinois”. Hence when talking about non-US cities Americans usually qualify it in the same way e.g. “London, England” or “Paris, France”. Non Americans don’t usually do this, if they need to qualify the city names, they would say something like “the French town of Nice” or “Nice, in Southern France”.
I think that custom results from the widespread reuse of town and city names in the US. In Europe names are to a much larger degree unique. And when they aren’t unique, it’s likely they’re within the same country and have a customary additional qualifier. Like Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt and die Oder.
Me. And worse. Practically every day we were in Cairo, I said to my (then) wife, “I can’t believe we’re in Cairo. Egypt. Africa.”
Use of the saints of different parishes was another common one. Near me there’s Tuddenham St Mary and Tuddenham St Martin, some thirty miles apart, each known simply as Tuddenham when it’s obvious which one is being referred to.
The Dual Monarchy was a union (a) of crowns and (b) for specific purposes, notably diplomacy and defense, of two nations, the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. Each nation had its own bureaucracy, laws, parliament, etc. Vienna had, besides the national government for Austria, the imperial ministries; Budapest, the national government for Hungary and a couple of sops from the joint ministries. In very rough terms, Austria comprised Slovenia (but with all the Istrian peninsula), the present Italian province of Friulia-Venezia Giulia, Austria, and the present Czech Republic. Hungary comprised Croatia, the Vojvodina in modern Serbia, Transylvania in Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. Southeast modern Poland, called Galicia, belonged to one nation or the other, but I don’t recall which. In addition to the two nations, Bosnia and Herzegovina was a protectorate incorporated within the empire but distinct from either nation.
Which reminds me of a fictional work by the great Avram Davidson…
Galicia was considered as a semi-autonomous province of Austria. It had a viceroy appointed by Vienna but the rest of the provincial administration was under de facto local control.
Yeah. My grandparents came here in the early 1900s. Their records indicate they were from “Hungary” or “Magyar” (no more and no less.)
FWIW the Hungarians never considered themselves “Austro-Hungarian” the way a Scot might consider himself “British.” They were Hungarians who happened to share a throne with those German-speaking folks over there.
exactly, I would never qualify a city in the ‘american way’ .
For another data point, my Hungarian great grandparent’s naturalization papers from the early 1900s list their origin simply as “Transylvania.”
I disagree. ISTM that only a hick would routinely mention the countries after those cities’ names. Ditto Tokyo, Moscow, Madrid, Rome, Beijing, etc. The bigger the foreign city, the less likely the country needs to be specified.
Well, it might be necessary to make clear that one is not referring to London, Kentucky, or Paris, Texas.
In the case of these large cities, you’re only going to be doing that if you’re in the vicinity of one of the smaller namesakes, or talking about both in the same conversation. Both of these are necessary exceptions to the rule.
It works the other way, too, that if you’re in England and mention London or Perth, it’s clear if not by name then by context that you’re probably not talking about London, Ontario or Perth, Western Australia.
I used to listen to a lot of shortwave, and they would always qualify everything. I remember it sounded weird because Americans say things like Chicago, Illinois, but shortwave said “Chicago, United States.”
It would be that way on all then English shortwave, from BBC, Radio Cuba, Russia, Japan, all the countries with English broadcasts. They would qualify everything.
In the English language history books I have read, when they discuss the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the nationality is frequently shortened to “Austrian” (e.g. “Austrian Dreadnought Szent Istvan”, or “the Austrian base at Pola”).
This may be because of the need to save space in printed material.
It may be because of the unique relationship between the military (and the Navy specifically) and the government.
I am not sure.
Didn’t help, did I?
Hate to nitpick, but… an der Oder. The Oder river, like most German rivers, has the feminine gender(“die Oder”). “An” takes the dative. Dative form of “die” = “der”.
(German grammar takes me back. Not to a happy place, either.)