It was usually pronounced to sound something like Ligawn, rather than Leg+Horn. Not too different, though how and why it got to be spelt that way, heaven only knows.
I meant that Genouuuuggh sounds so ugly. Leghorn is “wrong,” but at least it’s not hard to say the wrong way. The tricky part is to fight the urge to affect a southern accent and go “ah say ah say ah say.”
Another weird one is how Tagliaferro became Tolliver. Usually spelled Taliaferro too.
Why would you look in a German dictionary for the gender of a word in French? It’s not like genders are consistent across languages.
Not sure if you’re being wooshed or I am, but Langenscheidt puts out books for many languages. The reference was to the fact that they’re a German company, not that the translation was from German.
Yeah, it’s a French pocket dictionary from 15 years ago or so.
And on top of it, the “Croix” part is not even pronounced in proper French.
I suppose we should be thankful we don’t have to try a Danish (last prior owner until 1917) name.
Around PR we’ve just kept referring to it as Santa Cruz. Which BTW lives on in English in the demonym “Cruzan”.
How did we manage to twist “Firenze” into “Florence”? I’m picturing a wealthy 18th century Englishman on the Grand Tour looking around and saying “Aunt Florence would LOVE this town!”
Latin: Florentia. Became Firenze as Northern Italian speech evolved away from Vulgar Latin. But literate people elsewhere were still reading in Latin about “Florentia” long enough for it to stick.
:smack: I just got the name of Cruzan rum.
If there’s anywhere Italian isn’t spoken, it’s probably in Italy.
Ah! Makes more sense.
Link that shows that I might be wrong but wasn’t making it up:
Maybe more direct?: http://oi68.tinypic.com/9912rr.jpg
I never thought you were making it up, but I do think you can safely toss that dictionary in the recycling bin.
Cool. My old bible says “thou shalt commit adultery.” I’ve already tossed it.
If you actually had one of the original Wicked Bibles (the ones that had that line by mistake), it’d be very valuable, since most of the printing was destroyed.
Politics seems to play a big part. Bombay was re-spelled to please the non-English-speaking residents, but it’s imposition on English-speaking foreigners seems to be mostly the result of imposition on English-speaking locals: English is one of the common languages of India
Peking was re-spelled because most of the English maps and translations are done by the Chinese: to that extent they don’t care how I spell it, but all the material they provide is going to use a phonetic spelling of the Government dialect, using the Chinese government phoneticisation: it is NOT pronounced Beijing, because /nobody/ else uses the odd English letter pronunciation.
But actually, they do care how I spell Peking because the old spelling was based on the Shanghi pronunciation, which is both deprecated and politically sensitive: the English spelling was based on the Shanghi pronunciation because Shanghi was a treaty port, forced on the Chinese government by military defeat. To that extent, asserting a Mandarin pronunciation instead of a Shanghiese pronunciation is a deliberate snub to the external world.
Is ‘tossing it’ actually considered adultery?
I think many of the English names of cities mentioned in this thread come from Latin, and may actually be older than the “correct” local name. For example, Cologne is Köln in German, but it’s Colonia Agrippina in Latin, which was the original name of the city. And while Turin is Torino in Italian, I understand it’s also Turin in Piemontese, and the name goes back to the Taurini people. So the name wasn’t mangled in English (or French).
I don’t know where Saint Croix is, but many places in North America were first named by French speakers and the name was later modified in English. It should be Sainte-Croix in French, and probably originally was, but might have been reinterpreted as a name in English, where “Saint <name>” doesn’t change according to gender.
My point about the English names wasn’t a complaint about names being mangled. I was just pointing out that that’s where English gets the spellings of those names. And note I was just talking about spellings, not pronunciation.
As far as mangling goes, I don’t think that’s a valid accusation. Every language has names for exonyms (places names outside its area) that are not the same as the people who live in those areas use. For example, almost every language spells the second largest city in Switzerland differently: English: Geneva, French: Genève, Arpitan: Genèva, German: Genf, Italian: Ginevra, Romansh: Genevra.
Saint Croix is one of the US Virgin Islands, as well as two rivers on borders: one between Wisconsin and Minnesota and one between Maine and New Brunswick. Some may think it’s a error, but I disagree. It may be a mistake in French, but it isn’t one in English.
With a proper lisp? Wife tried to teach me Ethpanish, and the lisp continues to intrude.
Ukulele Ike, an 18th century Englishman would be unlikely to have an aunt named Florence, since it was a rare name before about 1860.