On 19/01/2010 12:28, Jeremy Double wrote:
Peter Beale wrote:

Surely Hannover/Hanover is not a misspelling, but simply the English
version - cf Wien/Vienna and countless others. Admittedly nowadays in
many cases the "native" version is normally used - Brits used to refer
to Coblence, Mayence, Brunswick, Frankfort and the like.

Also, the German spelling of place names has changed over the years: for
instance 19th century signs often use C instead of K. I saw an old sign
referring to Cöln (not Köln) recently, and Coblenz was the usual German
spelling of Koblenz until the 1920s.

And in most cases the soft C in German has changed to Z: now "Zentrum",
formerly "Centrum".

Well-known cities often have different placenames in different
languages: Venezia-Venedig-Venise-Venecia-Veneza-Venetië-Venice for
instance.

And there are the somewhat unpredictable rules about what is
"acceptable" to use. Any Briton who says "Madras" or "Calcutta" is
considered personally responsible for Amritsar, the Irish potato famine
and slavery, yet no-one gives a hoot about "Londres".

A Briton who says "Peking" may as well just set up a direct debit to the
BNP, yet many Continetals seem to use it as standard. Giving up on
trying to say "Gdansk" is morally no different to issuing the orders to
/Schleswig-Holstein/, yet Poles happily say "Breslau" when they
realise we struggle to say Wroclaw.

Meanwhile Czechs will happily and probably needlessly use an Anglicised
version (of the German version?) of names, while Danes will use English
versions we don't use ourselves.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK