People in Shanghai still call it Peking. Sort of. It’s the English spelling of the Shanghai pronunciation. Actually, people in Beijing don’t actually call it Beijing either – that’s the Chinese romanisation of the Mandarin pronunciation, but they don’t use American pronunciation or phonetics.
Of course, Melbourne isn’t pronounced Melbourne either.
Don’t even get me started on Worcestershire.
Ohio has a town called Wooster, spelled “Wooster”.
Ah - like Bertie (and my Great-great grandmother).
“It was the best of Shires, it was the Worcestershire”
Mao’s name was variously romanized as Tse-Tung and Zedong, with the actual accent approximately between those two spellings. And don’t get me started on the Arabic غ (ghayn).
Locially, there’s Valatie. Nobody outside the area gets that one right.
It’s pronounced as though the “e” is an “a”: Vuh-LAY-shuh
A better version is the one told by Richard Osman:
Pronounced “bister” and “wooster”, of course.
This is a pretty silly one, and I don’t know if commercials count as creative works, but there’s a commercial for Otezla (that treats plaque psoriasis) about a first date at a movie theater. I’ve seen it dozens of times for sure, but last night I spotted that the movie theater is called The Otezla.
The “Dr. Zaius” song from The Simpson’s Planet of the Apes musical just started running through my head for no reason and I just realized it’s the same tune as Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus.”
In Macbeth’s “sound and fury” speech, there’s a stealth “today” bridging the gap between future and past:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death….
A much-borrowed passage in sf world.
M. Barnard Eldershaw wrote a novel called Tomorrow and Tomorrow in 1947 but its modern reprints revised that to Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “A Big Trip Up Yonder” was retitled “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” in his collection Welcome to the Monkey House. Many authors have used “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” as titles for various lengths of fiction.
“This Petty Pace” has been used for short stories by Jason K. Chapman and Brian A. Dixon.
The Last Act of Recorded Time was a variant used for a novel by James Cooper.
All Our Yesterdays is the title of a seminal history of sf fandom by Harry Warner Jr. and at least a half dozen short stories and novels.
“Dusty Death” is the title of four short stories.
Is there any other five-line passage even in Shakespeare that has had each line mined for titles? Or so many?
Lines 3-6 of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” have to be up there:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…
Interesting challenge.
Here’s four lines from William Blake:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
“Tyger Tyger” - 2019 movie (and a Tiger Woods biography)..
“Burning Bright” - 2010 movie.
“The Forests of the Night” - 4 novels and a very bad Doctor Who episode.
“What Immortal Hand” - novel.
“Fearful Symmetry (or Symmetries)” - a bunch of books.
You got more SF, though.
All Our Yesterdays is also the title of a ST:TOS episode.
Shakespeare wrote around 36 plays. It’s more impressive that Andrew Marvell had one poem – “To His Coy Mistress” – that was used for many other titles. “World Enough and Time” has been used many times, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow” was an Ursula K. Leguin story, “A Fine and Private Place” is a novel by Peter S. Beagle.
Here’s a listing: To His Coy Mistress - Wikipedia
Note that the line “And your quaint honour turn to dust” was a rude pun when it was written. Not clear these days, though.
I once borrowed “A Chronicle of Wasted Time” from Shakespeare for a title and got blasted by friends saying the title was all too apt.
Here are many cases where book titles came from phrases in other literature:
Interesting list. I’ve read a bunch of McDermid novels and never caught all the T.S. Eliot references. Also, note to self: Don’t title your book Darkness Visible.
There are also numerous works with the title A tale told by an idiot and a notable one named The Sound and the Fury.