# Names of foreign places
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 20, 2000, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609 "2000-10-20T00:18:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/1 "2000-10-20T00:18:36Z")
Why are we Americans so inconsistent in our usage of foreign place names? Sometimes we leave the name in its native language (San Juan, Beijing, Botswana), while we Anglicize other names (Norway, Japan, Moscow)? We have even changed some over the years (Peking to Beijing). And some people go out of their way to pronounce “Barcelona” properly but not “Paris” or “Rome.” Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or is it just random tradition?
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/2 "2000-10-20T01:42:10Z")
My guess is that it’s just random… I live in Korea (am a whitey, tho), and the Korean language does the same thing. America, in Korean, is “Mi-Gook” while Canada is “Ken-na-da.” Australia is “Ho-Chu” while France is (as close as it can be pronounced in Korean) “Pu-ran-suh”
Probably other languages do the same thing…
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/3 "2000-10-20T01:54:15Z")
Yes. In Dutch, many words for cities and countries are Dutch, whereas others retain their native spelling.
We say Londen, Parijs, Berlijn, Rome, Praag, etc. Countries are often translated too: especially when they have more than one word in their name. “Frans Guyana”, for example. Why leave it English or French, if it’s practically a sentence?
For cities, I’d say that it is pretty much related with common use. Bejing used to be Peking here, but not after 1989. Iraq has become more common since the Gulf War.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/4 "2000-10-20T04:30:31Z")
Also covered last week in a hijack in the [Tierra del Fuego](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=42023) thread, and tangentially in the column [Why are there so many names for Germany?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_162.html)
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/5 "2000-10-20T12:00:36Z")
A lot of this is “tradition” – meaning that we perpetuate the errors of long ago because no one’s got the effort to change them.
It’s always bothered me that we say “Florence” for a town that the locals call “Firenze”, or “Smyrna” for “Izmir”. But “Florence” and “Smyrna” have a long history in the English language, and aren’t likely to change. If you notice, newer foreign cities (Brasilia) tend to remain in their original form.
English isn’t the only language that does this – in French, “London” is “Londres”.
As for pronunciation, I think a lot of this is carryover from the British tradition of pronouncing things the way they would be if they were English words – hence Paris is “par-iss” instead of “pa-ree”. The British do the same thing with other foriegn words, as well. American English is a different animal – we tend to try and copy the original pronunciation. I was puzzled by this, until I stumbled across a phrase in a British novel that summed it up – “He did not condecend to pronounce it in the French fashion.” An American would never view attempting the native pronunciation as condecension. I suspect it’s because the local pronunciations of places now within the US were originally in those languages. So we try to pronounce “Baton Rouge” as “bah-ton roozh” and “La Jolla” as “la ho-ya”. If these had been conquered by the British instead of incorporated into the US I suspect they’d be pronounced “Bay-ton Rouj” and “La Jolla”.
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### Author:  [@scratch1300](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scratch1300)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/6 "2000-10-20T13:36:57Z")
**Cal** has a good answer, but I think he’s kind of harsh in defining “tradition” as the perpetuation of errors. Is it really an error to call it _Finland_
instead of _Suomi_? Is it laziness that we don’t go around changing _Germany_ to _Deutschland_, _India_ to _Bharat_, _Croatia_ to _Hrvatska_, etc.? Not to mention _Albania_’s native name, _Shqperi_. How do you pronounce that?
But maybe I’m a reactionary – I still say _Byelorussia_ instead of _Belarus_.
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### Author:  [@TomH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TomH)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/7 "2000-10-20T13:43:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> So we try to pronounce “Baton Rouge” as “bah-ton roozh” and “La Jolla” as “la ho-ya”.
But what about Valdez, Alaska, Des Moines, Iowa and Nez Perce, Idaho?
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/8 "2000-10-20T13:53:18Z")
TomH:
So, things aren’t consistent. I still like A. Whitney Brown’s line that the one thing we learned from the Exxon Valdez catastrophe is that Alaskans can’t correctly pronounce Spanish.
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### Author:  [@Arken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arken)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/9 "2000-10-20T13:55:51Z")
You must be from another part of the US than I, Cal.
Here in Indiana, we have the town of Brazil which the locals call ‘Brazzle,’ ‘Versailles’ which is pronounced ‘Ver-sayles,’ ‘Peru’ which is pronounced ‘Pee-Roo’, ‘Russiaville’ which is pronounced ‘Rooshaville’ and (my favourite) ‘Gnawbone’ wich is pronounced ‘Gannaw-Bone-ee’ and is a corroption of a French place name (something bon)
On the other hand, my Dad told me once that there is a popular bar in London called the ‘Elephant and Castle’ but it’s real name is ‘The Emphanter of Castille’
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### Author:  [@TomH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TomH)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/10 "2000-10-20T14:27:01Z")
Cal: LOL. IIRC the townspeople voted on the pronunciation some time in the 1980s and decided to stay with Val-DEEz.
Arken: “Gnawbone” sounds like it might be a corruption of Narbonne which is in Languedoc-Rousillon, in the South of France.
Elephant and Castle is an area of South London, probably named after a local pub. It is likely that the pub was actually named after the _Infanta de Castille_, the title of one of the daughters of the King of Spain (a bit like calling it The Prince of Wales, I guess). This process, where a foreign word gets converted to a similar-sounding English counterpart, is delightfully known as “Hobson-Jobsonism”. British soldiers in India, observing Muslims chanting “Oh Hasan, Oh Husein” (Mohammed’s grandsons) took them to be chanting “Hobson Jobson”. The mind boggles.
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### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/11 "2000-10-20T14:31:20Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by scratch1300 \*
> **_Shqipëri_. How do you pronounce that?**
Ya missed a letter there. IIRC, the ‘q’ in Albanian is somewhat like ‘k’ with a ‘y’ after it, and the ‘ë’ is pretty close to a schwa. So it would be thus:
_Shkyi-puh-ri_
Unfortunately I don’t know where the stress would fall.
I think part of the way we named things in English stems from what they were called in Latin. Albania, for instance. Moscow, I would guess, is much the same - I’ve seen ancient maps of the city with the Latin title _Civitas Moscoviensis_ or something similar. Since the _-skv-_ combination of letters is not one that occurs in Latin, they had to rearrange it a little to make it more pronounceable for the Western European reader.
That of course only applies to place names in Europe, western Asia, and Africa - my guess for the far East would be ‘best guess’ pronunciations trying to imitate the way the locals pronounced it.
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### Author:  [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/12 "2000-10-20T14:37:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by scratch1300 \*
> \*\*\*\*Cal\*\*Is it really an error to call it _Finland_
> instead of _Suomi_? \*\*
Certainly not. It is the name of the country in the other national language, _Swedish_.
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### Author:  [@Arken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arken)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/13 "2000-10-20T14:39:17Z")
Thanks for the info, Tom.
You’re right about Narbonne definitely and I’m sure Infanta is also correct. I always wondered what an Emphanter was, but I thought it better not to ask.
My Dad liked to lecture.
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### Author:  [@labradorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/labradorian)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/14 "2000-10-20T15:56:24Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by panache45 \*
> **Why are we Americans so inconsistent in our usage of foreign place names?**
Whaddya mean, “we Americans”? Youse don’t have a monopoly on the English language, and English doesn’t have a monopoly on this “inconsistency” phenomenon, you know.
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### Author:  [@don\_Jaime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_Jaime)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/15 "2000-10-20T17:09:20Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \*
> **As for pronunciation, I think a lot of this is carryover from the British tradition of pronouncing things the way they would be if they were English words – hence Paris is “par-iss” instead of “pa-ree”.**
So why don’t the British pronounce their own place names like English words? W-o-r-c-e-s-t-e-r is “wooster?” T-h-a-m-e-s is “timz?” How the heck is “Wroxeter” even go?
Peking - yes. It’s correct - in Wade-Giles Romanization. The symbol “k” is used for the sound of “j,” though God help me, I dunno why. With the complete list of symbols in use, P-e-k-i-n-g in Wade-Giles is pronounced the same as B-e-i-j-i-n-g is in Pinyin. Some names shift, some don’t. “Fujian” appears to have replaced “Fukkien,” but “Jiang Jieshe” will forever be “Chiang Kai-shek” in English-speaking lands.
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### Author:  [@TampaFlyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TampaFlyer)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/16 "2000-10-20T21:17:57Z")
Good point, labradorian. I didn’t invent the names or pronunciations for any of those places, & I’m not taking the blame for any of it.
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### Author:  [@jcarbon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcarbon)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/17 "2000-10-20T21:55:24Z")
Can’t we make them change the names to the way we pronounce them? After all, who has the nukes? I say from now on Paree is officially ParIS. All in favor…
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### Author:  [@missbunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missbunny)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2000, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/18 "2000-10-20T22:40:06Z")
Do you really still hear Izmir referred to as Smyrna? This is surprising to me (I’m not at all implying that it doesn’t happen to you) because I was born there and I’ve never heard it as Smyrna except in the context of “Izmir (formerly Smyrna).”
Does this happen a lot? I am most curious.
As for the OP: I wish we said the name the way that the country of ownership said it, even if it’s with an American (or whatever) accent. It’s not too difficult to say Roma, Firenze, Nippon, Suomi, etc.
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### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2000, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/19 "2000-10-21T03:09:40Z")
Montpelier
or Mont pee lee eh in American. What do you think foreigners think of town names like Intercourse, or Normal, Illonois ir even Liberal Kansas?
Did you know that in France the Toyota MR2 sportscar is called something else? In France speak MR2 = MRdeux = merde = shit
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2000, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-of-foreign-places/37609/20 "2000-10-21T03:48:09Z")
In the case of Rome, the English spelling came from French. I believe there are several other non-French European names where there was a French influence. Lisbon and Seville, I think, and maybe others.
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