# Exonyms



## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

definition according to wikipedia



> An exonym is a name for a place that is not used within that place by the local inhabitants (neither in the official language of the state nor in local languages), or a name for a people or language that is not used by the people or language to which it refers.


two questions

1. What exonyms do you use for well known places around the world. I have heard London referred to as Londino and Londres.

2. Can anyone tell me why exactly it is that we have exonyms? 

i am yet to get an adequate explaination, all i have found is that we have different names for places, sometimes through direct translation, but no reason why etc etc...

If Rome is called Roma why don't people in England call it Roma?? Same with Athens, and many other cities, in many other languages...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

In my opinion, most exonyms are a thing of the past when we didn't know foreign languages and how to pronounce them. In the Netherlands, German exonymes like "Berlijn" (Berlin), and the English exonymes like "Londen" (London) are still used while most Dutch can sure pronounce them.

More irritating to me are the very phonetic transliterations, the Bulgarian city Burgas is written as "Boergas", or Kabul becomes "Kaboel", I really hate that, we're not living in the 1800's anymore hno:


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## Captain Obvious (Sep 13, 2002)

Germany itself is an exonym though. Or Austria and Vienna. Or Poland and Warsaw. 

Personally, I've always wanted to call it Österreich instead of Austria. Much much cooler.


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

Yeah callling countries by their real name would make a lot more sense. However as the world is gravitating more towards english, surely one day every city and "country" will be referred to by their English name??

The weirdest exonym i have found is livorno being called Leghorn.


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## Assemblage23 (Jan 6, 2008)

A few of them:

Wien (Vienna)
München (Munich)
Deutschland (Germany)
Österreich (Austria)
Die Schweiz (Switzerland)
London (Londres, Londra)


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## Chrissib (Feb 9, 2008)

Some more:
Breslau - Wroclaw
Preßburg - Bratislava
Laibach - Ljubljana
Lemberg - Lwiw
Königsberg - Kaliningrad


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

lists are all well and good... but nobody is sharing reasons why!


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## The other Dude (Jan 30, 2008)

diffrent languages?


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

^^ that doesn't cut it. London is London not Londres. Calling it Londres is completely incorrect, just like calling it Rome is. So why do it?


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## Assemblage23 (Jan 6, 2008)

In some cases it has to do with difficulty to pronounce them in foreign languajes.

But in other cases I agree with you, there is not a reason to call Frankfurt "Francfort" (in spanish). I guess people just do it because that's the way they were taught :dunno:

If someone's name is Carlos, it remains that way worldwide. It isn't Charles, nor Karl, his name will always be Carlos no matter where he's at.


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## z0rg (Jan 17, 2003)

Assemblage23 said:


> But in other cases I agree with you, there is not a reason to call Frankfurt "Francfort" (in spanish)


There is unless you are illiterated. In Spanish, Fráncfort = correct, Frankfurt = incorrect. Like it or not that's how it is. Fráncfort, Roma, Londres, Moscú, Tokio, Seúl, Estambul, Praga, Lisboa, El Cairo, Estocolmo, Varsovia, etc. 

Languages develop their own toponyms as they do with any other semantic field, what's wrong with that? I can't understand why do some people dislike that other languages call their place in its own way. Semantic nationalism? Why should I expect my country to be called España in every language? They don't even have the ñ out there.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

China is an exonym, Chinese refer to their country as Zhongguo (middle earth).

Same with Greece, the old name for 'slave' among the Ottomans Ive been told (and therefore offensive). Greeks refer to their country as Ellada (pronounced Ellatha), or officially, the Hellenic Republic.


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

the spliff fairy said:


> China is an exonym, Chinese refer to their country as Zhongguo (middle earth).
> 
> Same with Greece, the old name for 'slave' among the Ottomans Ive been told (and therefore offensive). Greeks refer to their country as Ellada (pronounced Ellatha), or officially, the Hellenic Republic.


Errm, I think it's middle "kingdom" not "middle earth" like from the Tolkien movies lol.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

lol soz


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## GTR22 (Nov 14, 2007)

Japan/ Japon - NIPPON
The name came from the Portugeese, I think they misspelled Nippon and it became Japon.


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## Captain Obvious (Sep 13, 2002)

bigbossman said:


> lists are all well and good... but nobody is sharing reasons why!


What more would you like explained? Could you be more specific? Different languages have different pronunciations, and sometimes a foreign word cannot be easily pronounced. So you completely change the word to something that can be more "familiar."

A Spanish speaker would call your country "Inglaterra" because England would be impossible for a native speaker with no English language knowledge to pronouce properly. Our "E" sound is like their "I" sound, which explains that switch. And land to terra should be obvious as well. 

German has all sorts of different sounds for their letters that aren't quite the same in English or the Romance languages. So it's pretty easy to see why we use so many Exonyms for Germany (sorry, Deutschland ... er ... Alemania ...)

I simply don't agree that we should abolish Exonyms. In some cases, we should make a few more!! In Poland, there's a city called Bydgoszcz. Seriously. *Bydgoszcz*. And that's what we name it on English maps. I freaking dare you to pronounce it properly. So either we need to rename it "Bidagost" (which isn't even correct anyway), call it "Bromberg" like the Germans, or just Anglicise it completely.


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

GTR22 said:


> Japan/ Japon - NIPPON
> The name came from the Portugeese, I think they misspelled Nippon and it became Japon.


Actually I think it came from the word "Cipangu" which is what Japan is labeled on old European maps. "Cipangu" was a mis-translation (probably by Portuguese) of the Chinese pronunciation for Japan (日本国), the written form of which is equivalent to the Japanese form (nihonkoku) but spoken differently.


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

Captain Obvious said:


> What more would you like explained? Could you be more specific? Different languages have different pronunciations, and sometimes a foreign word cannot be easily pronounced. So you completely change the word to something that can be more "familiar".
> 
> A Spanish speaker would call your country "Inglaterra" because England would be impossible for a native speaker with no English language knowledge to pronouce properly. Our "E" sound is like their "I" sound, which explains that switch. And land to terra should be obvious as well.
> 
> German has all sorts of different sounds for their letters that aren't quite the same in English or the Romance languages. So it's pretty easy to see why we use so many Exonyms for Germany (sorry, Deutschland ... er ... Alemania ...)


That doesn't cut it at all.

Pronouncing a name in a different way to locals doesn't make it incorrect and it happens every day within normal situations.

I live near Greenwich in south London. Us south London locals call it Grin-itch. But everyone else calls it Gren-itch. Neither is technically wrong and we get on with it.

Birmingham is another. Yanks call it Birming-ham. Brits call it Birmingum.

Just because you would pronounce it differently doesn't make it wrong. 

Just look at Paris, by the laws of entymology shouldn't we have re written that cities name as Paree or something. We call it Paris, it doesn't matter it's how we speak.



> I simply don't agree that we should abolish Exonyms. In some cases, we should make a few more!! In Poland, there's a city called Bydgoszcz. Seriously. *Bydgoszcz*. And that's what we name it on English maps. I freaking dare you to pronounce it properly. So either we need to rename it "Bidagost" (which isn't even correct anyway), call it "Bromberg" like the Germans, or just Anglicise it completely.


What is wrong in pronouncing how we feel it should be pronounced rather than changing the name of the city and it's spelling to suit us.

As i mentioned it happens regionally, and with examples such as Paris.

The city of kiev apparently wants people to spell it properly as Kyiv, the cities
actual name


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## Captain Obvious (Sep 13, 2002)

I think you're going to just have to learn to live with it. 

Londra (Albanian, Italian, Maltese, Romanian, Romansh, Turkish), 
Londres (Catalan, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Ladino), Londrez (Breton), 
Landan (Arabic), لندن (Persian, Urdu), 
Llundain (Welsh), 
Londain (Irish), 
Londan - Лёндан (Belarusian), 
Londe (Limburgish), 
Londen (Afrikaans, Dutch), 
Londhíno - Λονδίνο (Greek), 
Londinium (Latin), 
Londona (Latvian), 
Londonas (Lithuanian), 
Londono (Esperanto), 
Londyn (Polish), 
Londýn (Czech, Slovak), 
Lontoo (Finnish), 
Loundres (Cornish), 
Luân Đôn (Vietnamese), 
Lundenwic (Anglo-Saxon), 
Lúndūn - simpl.:伦敦, trad.:倫敦 (Mandarin Chinese), 
Lundúnir (Icelandic), 
Lunnainn (Scots Gaelic), 
Reondeon - 런던 (Korean), 
Rondon - ロンドン (Japanese)


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## dösanhoro (Jun 24, 2006)

Slight differences because of pronounciation are one thing. Entirely different words with different history are the most interesting for me.


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

Captain Obvious said:


> I think you're going to just have to learn to live with it.


Lol you make as if i don't.

I was replying to your repy. As to my reasons as to it being pointless, we're entitled to our opinions. However i do believe as the world globalizes more we are going to have to start calling our cities by one name!


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## mphillips (Nov 14, 2002)

Mailand = Milan = Milano
Venedig = Venice = Venezia


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## Cobucci (Jun 30, 2005)

With Brazilian cities it's not common to occur that.

Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, Salvador, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre are some cities that have the same written form in any language.

I've only seen exonyms with São Paulo (San Paolo) and Brasil (Brazil, Brésil, Brasile, Brazilië, Brasilien)


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

^^ too modern


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Do Spanish people call Oldham 'Antiguo jamón'?


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## Federicoft (Sep 26, 2005)

HAve you checked this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_exonyms


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## bigbossman (Jun 25, 2007)

Federicoft said:


> HAve you checked this?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_exonyms


of course, it was never, what, it was why!


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## ReiAyanami (May 14, 2008)

The best ones I can think of are:
Germany: nothing to do with the native Deutschland, but I'm not sure if Germania counts.
Japan: Nippon 

and for me, the most important is this deal with *Greece*

"Greece" in "Greek" doesn't mean anything. The country, the last 3.000 years, is called Hellas (Ελλάς or Ελλάδα), the people Hellenes (Έλληνες), the civilazation Hellenic or Hellenistic and the language Ellinika/Hellinika (Ελληνικά)
In very early stages many other names were also used like Achaeans (Αχαιοί), Danaans (Δαναοί), Argeioi, (Αργείοι), as we can see in Homer's Iliad (8th century b.c). By 5th century b.c. and onwards Hellas and Hellenes is becoming cannon.

Greco/Greek was a name given by the early Romans to the "Greek" settlers in Italy and thus the name became popular in the western latin influenced world.

A very interesting article is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Greeks


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## The Chemist (Feb 19, 2003)

China's already been mentioned, but also the capital city of China. For the longest time in western countries it was known as Peking, even though no one in Beijing actually calls it Peking.


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## Federicoft (Sep 26, 2005)

The Chemist said:


> China's already been mentioned, but also the capital city of China. For the longest time in western countries it was known as Peking, even though no one in Beijing actually calls it Peking.


I think it is still know as Peking in most Western countries, except the English speaking world.


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

Federicoft said:


> I think it is still know as Peking in most Western countries, except the English speaking world.


For the record:

English: "Beijing"
French: "Pékin"
Spanish: "Pekín"
German: "Peking"
Italian: "Pechino"
Dutch: "Peking"
Danish: "Beijing/Peking"

"Peking" originated from the the French version, which is pronounced differently; ie. in English it sounds like "PEE-king" while the French is closer with the "PEI-kin" sound.


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> Do Spanish people call Oldham 'Antiguo jamón'?


Serrano or Ibérico?


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

The Chemist said:


> China's already been mentioned, but also the capital city of China. For the longest time in western countries it was known as Peking, even though no one in Beijing actually calls it Peking.


Actually "Peking" was the original pronunciation of 北京. When Europeans first came into contact with China in the 16th century, that's how it was pronounced in Mandarin Chinese. It is only after the 16th century that the "p" came closer to a "b", and the "k" was transformed into a "j" in Mandarin. Western languages have preserved the original pronunciation. This original pronunciation is also preserved in Cantonese (Beijing is pronounced "Bakging" in Cantonese) as well as in most southern Chinese dialects (it is pronounced "Pakkian" in Taiwanese dialect for example). The original pronunciation is also preserved in Japanese (Beijing is pronounced "Pekin" in Japanese).

Personally I find it stupid that the spelling "Beijing" was adopted in English. It's only a different pronunciation of the exact same name, but most English speakers are not aware of it of course, and they can't even pronounce "Beijing" correctly anyway, so they might as well have kept "Peking" as most other European languages have done.


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## Saigoneseguy (Mar 6, 2005)

Beijing= Mandarin
Peking= Cantonese
Vietnamese: Bac Kinh

nothing wrong.


On a further note, all world cities have own names in Chinese.


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