# What place naming conventions are used by non-English speaking countries? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 25, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858 "2017-10-25T23:57:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![zuer-coli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ba9def/32.png) [@zuer-coli](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuer-coli)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/41 "2017-10-27T22:42:21Z")
Darren Garrison Yeah, just goes to show that you should not rely on your memory, swapping Chaney for Rumsfeld is’t that big a stretch, but still it’s incorrect. Thanks for pointing that out. I wonder how many folk even knew what I was talking about. Talked to a Twenty something the other day. They didn’t know about the Kent State shootings, not quite sure why that surprised me. Zuer-coli ---
**Author:** ![zuer-coli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ba9def/32.png) [@zuer-coli](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuer-coli)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/42 "2017-10-27T23:02:48Z")
All, Thank you for exonym(s) new word for me. Thanks for all the replies, as I have said; I am not really qualified to make any specific comments, although I was aware of the derivation of many place names here in the States. At one time our family had a little book that explained the County names of every County in the State of Ohio. Zer-coli ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/43 "2017-10-27T23:33:14Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > OK, but is Greek Sin related to Hebrew Sin as in Isaiah and Genesis? I honestly don’t know - but Israel was part of the Hellenic sphere of influence for centuries, so even if “Sin” didn’t mean China at the beginning, it probably did by the end. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/44 "2017-10-28T03:23:24Z")
Similar, animal names they are not familiar with. Once on a Chinese newspaper they were covering a baseball game and I asked a Chinese coworker what it said and he said a game with the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Toronto Blue Jays was instead, a game between the red birds and the blue birds. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/45 "2017-10-28T13:14:28Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Recently, I realized the Montreal, Konigsburg and Monterey all translate to “king’s mountain”. Nitpick: I guess you meant Königsberg, nowadays the Russian Kaliningrad, in what used to be East Prussia, the town of Immanuel Kant. That indeed means king’s mountain, whereas Königsburg would be the kings’s castle. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/46 "2017-10-28T14:24:57Z")
Another thought on Chinese phonetic names: As I understand it, there’s (more or less) one written Chinese language, but many spoken ones: They all use the same characters, but different regions pronounce those characters differently (as in, as completely different words, not just the same word with a different accent). This would mean that, if you find a set of characters that’s pronounced “Chicago” in Mandarin, it’ll be pronounced differently in Cantonese. How do they address that? Do Cantonese speakers know enough Mandarin to be able to see how it’s supposed to be pronounced, or do they think it’s pronounced however those characters are said in Cantonese? ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/47 "2017-10-28T17:25:00Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Nitpick: I guess you meant Königsberg, nowadays the Russian Kaliningrad, in what used to be East Prussia, the town of Immanuel Kant. That indeed means king’s mountain, whereas Königsburg would be the kings’s castle. Yes, I did. I got sloppy, since I do know the difference between berg and burg. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/48 "2017-10-30T21:38:40Z")
Calling China _Sin_ instead of _Chin_ is because of Arabic. In some old eastern dialects of Arabic, the letter sad ص was pronounced as an affricate, as tsade still is in Hebrew— the sound /ts/ instead of emphatic /s‘/. Ancient Persia was already calling it by the name Chin, and when Arabic picked that up, the dialect with the affricate for ص used it as the closest available match for the “ch” affricate. However, in Classical Arabic, the pronunciation of ص is just /s‘/. Hebrew and Latin (Sino-) picked up the Classical Arabic version of the name, Sin (which was originally supposed to be Tsin, substituted for Chin). Hebrew usually transliterates Arabic ص as tsade, but in this case made it samekh, the plain /s/ — probably got it indirectly via Greek or Latin instead of directly from Arabic. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/49 "2017-10-31T01:15:41Z")
Except in rare instances, maps present place names in their local languages. No atlas of North America would use the same names for Little Rock, Arkansas, and Petit-Roche, New Brunswick. Nor would a Spanish map use the same names for St. Joseph, Missouri, and San Jose, California Russian or Arabic maps would approximate the sound of the words of American cities, and represent them according to the phonetics of their alphabet. You can find your own clues about things like this by going to Wiki pages, then looking at them in different languages. The Russian Wiki has an article about Литл-Рок (Арканзас), which a Russian user would pronounce, approximately, as “Little Rock (Arkanzass)”. Here you can see the Chinese article about Little Rock: [小岩城 (阿肯色州) - 维基百科，自由的百科全书](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E5%B2%A9%E5%9F%8E_(%E9%98%BF%E8%82%AF%E8%89%B2%E5%B7%9E)) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/50 "2017-10-31T15:37:09Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Well, the thread topic is about “non-English speaking countries,” isn’t it? Yes, but it’s about what non-English countries call _other_ countries, not their own. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/51 "2017-10-31T20:03:19Z")
Persia calls India Hindustan. India officially calls itself Bharat—but Hindi and Urdu speakers are long accustomed to calling their country Hindustan too. Real life ignores the neat boundaries we try to set between things and it colors outside the lines. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858/52 "2017-10-31T20:24:55Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Ciudad Juarez and Ciudad Obregon, and that’s just from one country. Yeah, I realized later that I should have said “in Spain” and not “in Spanish”. The same country also has the pileup called La Puebla de los Ángeles de Zaragoza, which got the final appendix after its most famous son; in Spain we’ve got a few similar appendices (Sos del Rey Católico, Ferrol-formerly-del Caudillo) but the original name was, respectively, Sos and Ferrol, and they were named after someone born there rather than after their founder like those Tennessee places. There are many towns in Spain which were named after their founder or whomever was in charge at the time, but by the Romans (Pompaelo, Caesar Augusta…). Naming places after their founder seems to be kind of a colonial thing if you ask me… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-place-naming-conventions-are-used-by-non-english-speaking-countries/799858.md?page=2)