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BTW I'm very impressed that on my plucking Mumbai out of thin air there is already a discussion of it from several months back. Your first posting to it was very informative too: just the sort of thing I like to know.
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veteran
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veteran
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Name Changes
Quite possible Myanmar may revert to Burma, and Yangon to Rangoon. We have precedent in Leningrad going back to St. Petersburg, Titograd going back to Podgorica, and no doubt plenty of others. One of the rules of place names is that the powers-that-be-at-the-moment can and may determine what names are to be official.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jackie states: This is exactly the way I feel about the Methodists going back through so many long-ago written hymns and replacing 'man' or 'men' with 'people', or some such. It offends my sensibilities.
Man is an old English word meaning human being. Person is an old Etruscan word meaning mask. People is also an old Etruscan word but the AHD doesn't say what it meant.
In the Ithaca Community Chorus one year we sang a bunch of Christmas carols, carefully removing all the "sexist" references (we couldn't figure out what to do with the "merry gentlemen" so we left that one out) and then gayly went on to sing a song about a little woperson who sat in the window drinking her rose petal tea while patiently waiting for her MAN to come home from the sea.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2000
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Use of 'English' place names all falls apart when you come to actually visit the places. As a railway enthusiast travelling around Europe I quickly learned that I wasn't going to get very far looking for trains to Cologne!
But what to do in Belgium? Try getting a train to Antwerp from a Walloon area! Or what about a train to Lille in France from somewhere where the signs are in Flemish.
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> I admit that there is apparently an 'arrogance' implicit in the fact that we say Florence instead of Firenze or Venice instead of Venezia
I have always considered an honor for a city having its name translated. Only countries and very important cities deserve this privilege. We, Spaniards, say “Londres”, “Nueva York” or “Moscú” but have no Spanish words for smaller cities on those countries.
Lots of cities in Spain are lately changing their official names to Catalonian, Basque or Galician names and we are living the, absurd IMO, debate about if everybody else should employ, as some nationalists insist, the new names instead of the older ones.
I have never used Beijing instead or Peking and I will continue using Bombay, I consider that a language shouldn’t be changed by political decisions.
Juan Maria.
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old hand
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old hand
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Would you call it cultural arrogance or just cultural stupidity if a town uses a foreign city name but mispronounces it? There's a suburb of Cincinnati named Versailles and the "es" is pronounced at the end, far from the real French pronounciation. Toledo is also mispronounced from is Spanish namesake. In the US it's "Tol-ee-do", but in Spain, as far as I've heard, it's "Tol-eh-do".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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JazzOctopus asked There's a suburb of Cincinnati named Versailles and the "es" is pronounced at the end, far from the real French pronounciation. Toledo is also mispronounced from is Spanish namesake. In the US it's "Tol-ee-do", but in Spain, as far as I've heard, it's "Tol-eh-do".If I may offer my sen on the matter, I think that the two examples you give are situaations in which it is entirely appropriate to pronounce the names differently. Versailles, Cincinnati is not Versailees, France, and Toledo, Ohio is not Toledo, Spain, so pronouncing the names ina different manner serves to make that distinction clear. Here in New Zealand there is a topographical feature known as the Bombay Hills, north of which there is no civilised society. Despite the large, and rapidly growing, Indian population on both sides of those hills, no one has suggested renaming them "The Mumbai Hills" 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And in NY, you can go to Houston (House ton ) street-- but in texas, the is a city called Houston (hew ston)-- i would say the word differently depending on where it was--
but if Houston texas, desided to label a souther quadrant of the city, where all the arty folk have set up shop, Soho, ,just like in NY-- I would call it Soho (just like the London area that NY stole the name from...)
in NY, SOHO, is south of Houston...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Max blandly stated: Here in New Zealand there is a topographical feature known as the Bombay Hills, north of which there is no civilised society. Despite the large, and rapidly growing, Indian population on both sides of those hills, no one has suggested renaming them "The Mumbai Hills" 1. For those of you not in on the joke, the city of Auckland is immediately north of the Bombay Hills and contains approximately one-third of the population; about 1.3 million people. Aside from that, I agree with Max. 2. At the moment, most Aucklanders are only vaguely aware that the Bombay Hills exist. Their maps all have "Here there be dragons" lettered in old English script five miles south of Drury, the southern-most suburb. Renaming the Bombay Hills to the Mumbai Hills might have the adverse effect of reminding them that there is life south of those same hills .... [cynical  ]
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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enthusiast
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Juanmaria wrote Lots of cities in Spain are lately changing their official names to Catalonian, Basque or Galician names Ooh, but they make me so excited, and as soon as I find them I begin (quivering and) memorizing A Coruña, Lleida, Eivissa, and so on: and as a lover of Basque I have always used Donostia, Bilbo, Gasteiz, Gipuzkoa and the rest. Even better would be if Canada and the USA started doing this (slurp slaver drool): then we'd all have to memorize Ktaqamk (Newfoundland), Epekwitk (Prince Edward I.), and Dzidzalal'ich (Seattle). I don't think I could handle so much fun all at once. 
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