City names in different languages - a fun look at exonyms

Some cities have different names in other languages. These are called exonyms. Here I take a fun look at names in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Dutch, Icelandic, Irish and Welsh for cities around the world.
00:00 Introduction
00:20 English exonyms past and present
00:46 Different kinds of exonym
01:01 Names borrowed from a third language
01:15 Translated names
02:22 Names using Middle Chinese pronunciation
02:51 Chinese names for San Francisco and Melbourne
03:30 Places that end up with the same name
03:58 Exotic spelling
04:17 Various names for London and Edinburgh
04:43 Old Dutch names for UK towns
05:00 Old Dutch names in New York
05:11 Icelandic exonyms
Puerto Williams By W. Bulach - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Ushuaia By Jerzy Strzelecki - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Woolwich - By Kleon3 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Woolwich Arsenal - By Kleon3 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Edinburgh Carlton Hill - By Saffron Blaze - Own work, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Edinburgh Old Town Panorama - By Depthcharge101 - A panorama stitched using 6 picturesPreviously published: www.flickr.com/photos/jhlau/1..., CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Canterbury - By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Southampton - By Richard Nevell - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Great Yarmouth - By Leigh Last - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Empire Atlantis - By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Scarborough - By Thomas Tolkien - Flickr: Scarborough, North Yorkshire. (4 of 7), CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Shambles - By Peter K Burian - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
York Minster - By MatzeTrier - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Livorno - By Piergiuliano Chesi, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Lyon - By Phinou - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... Phinou - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Gothenburg - By Moralist - Own work, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Norwich castle - By Pipin81 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Chinese Sword - By 白色瑰宝 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Colisseum - By Alessandroferri - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Are you going to Old Gold Mountain, or indeed Scharenburg Fair? You can catch a tango in Góðviðra on your way to Feurland. All while wearing your favourite Áth na nDamh brogues.

[@marcasdebarun6879]

A fun fact about York is that the English name actually comes from the Norse Jórvík, which in turn took from Old English Eoforwic. Quite a roundabout route! It probably would've been something like Everwich if the Old English name had survived directly into Modern English.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Fun indeed. Thanks for posting that. I like the idea of a city in an alternate universe called New Everwich, New Everwich.

[@TheIrekis]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages in Irish York is Eabhrac (sorry for sipping fadas)

[@marcasdebarun6879]

@@TheIrekis There's actually no fadas in 'Eabhrac', so you're grand!

[@Guy-Mann]

Kind of like inputting a word into google translate and then retranslating it the other way. Or maybe more like a game of telephone except instead of a long line of people you have two people exchanging the same word after a whole year has passed.

[@philroberts7238]

And presumably the Latin name, Eboracum, would have been derived from an earlier Brittonic name.

[@conorhutter9800]

damn, his pronunciation of all these language examples is truly incredible

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Wow. Thank you!

[@jonntischnabel]

Loved the trolling of american "edinburrow" 😂

[@arbataxiansoul]

One of the reasons why I love old AM radios is the names of the distant, exotic cities that were displayed along with the frequencies, often in foreign languages. As a child I found that extremely fascinating.

[@EdMcF1]

Inter-railing in the mid-80s, I had a Thomas Cook European railway timetable, a red book. At the back, it had an index with a list of major cities given in every variant in a major language (Slavic languages not included due to the Eastern Bloc). The place with the most names was Aachen, at 9. Funny thing for me was I was in a train leaving Munich and there was a Polish lady (married to a German, not present) with her daughter, talking to some elderly German women in German. They kept referring to Danzig as her home town and I thought "Oh yes, the old Free City" and I started looking for it on my map in the book, and it took me ages to click that it was now Gdansk, famous at the time due to the growth of the Solidarity movement.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Great story. Thanks.

[@colinmacdonald5732]

I'm in Danzig right now... reckon that Danzig fell into disuse when the Beeb got a hold of it in 1980, always overrespectful of the "correct" place-name, hence Mumbai etc. I like "Danzig", it makes me feel as if I'm in an Eric Ambler novel. Danzig must have been fairly well known to us folks in Aberdeenshire back in the day, the chap who built Craigivar Castle was known colloquially as Danzig Willie because that's where he made his fortune.🎉

[@marektomecek]

Yep, Aachen is "Cáchy" in Czech.

[@leviway8874]

In Welsh we (unsurprisingly) have names for many English border towns. There's a lot of interesting bilingual history in these areas. Henffordd(Hereford) was a bilingual town/city until the 17th century. And rural parts of Herefordshire still have Welsh names. The language in the west of the county died during the 19th century.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I was surprised at how many places have Welsh names even quite far into England.

[@leviway8874]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I think it's partly historical and partly people trying to rid the language of as much English influence as possible (personally, I dont mind the odd word from English). Many native speakers might not recognise names like Caeredin, especially if they were educated through the medium of English. The problems of a minority language 😂.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

@@leviway8874 Navajo is big on the no-loan-words thing. They coin really interesting place names. Wales is Naʼashǫ́ʼiitsoh Łichííʼí Bikéyah (land of the red dragon)

[@wowzaabean]

Just out of curiosity, what do you call Oswestry?

[@kajafreur527]

​@@wowzaabean Oswestry in Welsh is "Croesoswallt" which means "Cross of Saint Oswald" (whereas the English name means "Oswald's Tree"). Most likely named after Saint Oswald, King of Northumbria.

[@ROCKETRICKYH]

I am just old enough to remember hearing one or two of my parents' NATO colleagues referring to 'Leghorn' in the early 1970s, when we used to go to the US Army's Camp Darby to shop and watch movies. We lived near La Spezia. For us, it was definitely "Livorno", of which I have fond memories. To call the place Leghorn was really odd to me!

[@LittleNala]

Many years ago, when I used to travel round France doing the vendange (grape picking), French friends were always impressed when I said I came from 'Bear-ming-'am' instead of Birmingham. It's not an internationally well-known city (unlike Liverpool or Manchester), but they knew right away where I meant when I 'Frenchified' it a bit!

[@mikeball6182]

Boerna Inga Ham

[@davewhitehead8601]

Having moved to Germany in 1997, I can confirm that Minga (Min-gha) is correct. Here in Württemberg, the dialect changes names even more. Stuttgart is Schduagert, Winnenden is Winnada, Steinheim Steina, Besigheim Besiga and my town of Backnang is Baggana. Another very interesting video, thank you!

[@PeterNGloor]

In Switzerland, in the German part, most place names are written in standard German, but are called different names in our dialect, which is the only spoken language we use. This is confusing to German immigrants at first.

[@helanzixingche]

It can be confusing if you travel in Belgium near the language border. One moment you might see a sign like ‘Bergen 12 km’. A few streets further you might see ‘Mons 11 km’.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Interesting. That must happen a lot across borders.

[@galoomba5559]

Do they not have names in both languages? Here (Slovenia and neighbouring countries) they tend to have names in different languages even across country borders

[@helanzixingche]

As far as I remember they don't do this. Another example is that in (Dutch speaking part of) Belgium they have a sign to Rijsel. Which is the French city of Lille.@@galoomba5559

[@apertamono]

​@@galoomba5559 In Belgium, language pride is more important than convenience. The language of signs is determined by the location where they're placed. And besides Brussels, only a few small areas are officially bilingual. The reality might be different, but to avoid violent conflicts, the language border from 1963 is set in stone. I just double-checked this on Google Maps and found a roundabout in a Walloon village that pointed on three sides to the French name for a Flemish town. Only signs on major highways will use endonyms for cities outside of Belgium, like Lille (Rijsel in Dutch) or Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French).

[@aresee8208]

I luved in Germany a bunch of years ago, though my German never got better than so-so. Once, I was talking to a German, telling her I was going on a vacation to Venice. When I got to the point of naming my destination, I realized I had no idea what it was called in German. And to the German woman I was talking to, neither Venice nor Venezia meant anything. Only llater did I learn that in German it is called Wenedig.

[@usakousa]

Ididn't know until fairly recently that the English place name Brunswick (as in New Brunswick in Canada, Brunswick Street in various towns) came from the German town Braunschweig.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Indeed.

[@phonaesthem]

My all-time favorite is the French town of Montbéliard, whose euphonious name is rendered as the slightly less aesthetic Mömpelgard in German :D Icelandic also has so many cool ones, like "Kænugarður" for Kyiv (literally "small boat garden", probably a phonosemantic matching of older Slavic *Kyjevŭ gordŭ), "Lundúnir" for London (a pluraletantum), and "Brimar" (also plural), an older name for the German city of Bremen. Thanks for your videos, I just found your channel and it's right up my alley :)

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Those are all very cool. Thanks for sharing.

[@BobWitlox]

Rijsel for Lille (F). This name is used in Flanders. In the Netherlands we use Lille. Rijsel is unknown to most Dutch.

[@julioumbertopinto1567]

The Italians have remarkable toponyms! Besides the old ones as: Veglia for Krk, Ragusa for Dubrovnik, Sciaffusa for Schaffhausen, it's worth to look at South Tyrol and chew on: Vipiteno for Sterzing, Santa Maria for Aufkirchen, Ferrara for Schmieden. I'd cheerfully go on and rename my bavarian homeland. Drop Unterschweinbach and Kuchenried, pull out Porcafossa di sotto and Tortacanna.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I love these. Thanks for letting me know.

[@bhami]

I love your work! For the sake of precision, I must point out that at 5:02 in the on-screen caption, the US Staten Island is misspelled.

[@thomasloos8257]

An interesting case are the couple of (very antiquated) German exonyms for Italian cities like Welsch-Bern for Verona or Welsch-Bergen for Bergamo, combining an analogy to German-language place names with the clarification that these are the "welsh" - that is: foreign, tendencially Romance and/or Celtic - counterparts. It has the same etymological root as in Wales, Wallonia, and Wallachia, at least the formermost of which of course remains an exonym, as well.

[@cv5w]

Wallachia is an exonym. The locals called that state "Țeara Rumânească" (and later "Țara Românească") which meant Roman Land or Roman Country (eventually meaning Romanian Land or Romanian Country).

[@Gil-games]

Can you explain why is Milano called Mailand in German?

[@thomasloos8257]

@@Gil-games I think that one is just a phonetic approximation, though I'm not entirely sure. The -land part in particular may have been meant as a translation of some sort.

[@marcmonnerat4850]

We, the so-called _Swiss-French_ are the _Welsch_ for our Alemannic neighbours. We call ourselves _Romands_ . And the Zähringer _Bern_ used to be called _Verona_ in Italian.

[@rjendall2711]

Love it Dave. Absolutely mind-boggling! Good to see Great Yarmouth and Norwich featured 😀

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Yes, I was pleased the Dutch and Icelanders had made the effort with Norfolk.

[@JackHeywood]

I like the Dutch name for Berlin - "Berlijn"; it seems like what you would immediately invent if you had to Dutchify the 'normal' name!

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Same with Parijs.

[@colinmacdonald5732]

Ronas Hill, the highest point of Shetland used to be Blaubergen in Dutch and Rhinefeld in French. It must be about the only landscape feature in Scotland to have a different name in other European languages.

[@CamstonIsland]

I've been working on a conlang called Caprish, a language spoken on a slightly above sea level Dogger Bank archipelago closely related to the other Ingvaeonic Germanic languages of Old English, Frisian, and Low Saxon. Due to its history, it has a number of exonyms for itself and other places. Caproney is called 'Kapronen' in German and Dutch, 'Les Capries' in French, and Latin 'Capriae'. Its capital 'Aervigh' (established as Aegirsvik by the Norse during the contemporary Danelaw) can be translated as 'Arwick' in English, 'Aarwijk' in Dutch, 'Ärwig', and 'Érvy' in French. Caprish exonyms for other places come from three routes: direct contact (direct calques or through Hanseatic Low German), mediation through a third party (usually German), or modern transliterations. Such exonyms include 'Londen' for London, 'Mingen' for Munich, 'Lyghtensteyn' for Lichtenstein, 'Dansyc' for Gdansk, 'Ueen' for Vienna, 'Detsland' for Germany, 'Hamburgh' for Hamburg, 'Lubegh' for Lübeck, 'Lissabon' for Lisbon, 'Grighenland' for Greece, 'Italye' for Italy, and, worst of all, 'Syeghye' for Czechia.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

That’s cool. I’ve never really got into conlangs, but I do like alternative history so I find your description fascinating.

[@EnginAtik]

"Batman" is a city in Turkey and probably the coolest endonym for a city name.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I’d love to go there!

[@bruceperkins4601]

Travelling south in France years ago I was puzzled by RIJSEL on a motorway sign. Took time to realise it was LILLE; took even longer to realise both referred to an island (aan Der Isel’, or similar, + a version of Isle). Border towns are so fascinating.

[@thecaveofthedead]

I've been interested in this from trying to dissect any kind of consistency in the politics of these exonyms. We have clear examples of people who dislike the colonial association of a name wanting it to be abandoned in favour of an endonym (Ceylon vs. Sri Lanka might be an example - although I believe the name has a complex history). But there are also examples of autocratic regimes making petulant demands for the same without any representation - Burma being the standout example. Then there are a great many countries like mine (South Africa), in which there are a large number of indigenous languages and no single endonym can presumably be said to exist - so what would you ask people to call such a place even when the name has negative associations (there was actually a minor movement among those fighting for freedom before the end of apartheid to rename our country, "Azania," which is not unpleasant, but seems slightly arbitrary). So although I don't feel like I'm clear on the subject, I feel better informed.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Yes, it gets difficult in very linguistically diverse places to decide what an endonym is. I imagine that some of the recent decolonialised names for Indian cities much have involved choosing one local language over another. Sri Lanka is indeed complex, and involves using the Sinhala name for the country, to the detriment of the Tamil population.

[@sueboardman4493]

Very professional & clear. A fascinating account with some interesting cultural insights.

[@Dorkthrone111]

Being Swedish, I have noticed that there is only one place in the US which has a Swedish exonym in use, and that is California, which we call "Kalifornien". For every other place in the US, we use the endonym, as far as I'm aware. Conversely, I'm aware of three exonyms in English for places in Sweden - "Scania" for Skåne, "Gothenburg" for Göteborg, and "Dalecarlia" for Dalarna.

[@NihonNiv]

Hi, Dave. Great video, as always! But I just want to point out that "Tierra del Fuego" is called "Terre de Feu" in French, not "Tierre de Feu".

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Indeed. I didn’t spot that door a while.

[@theflyingkahoon1099]

Really enjoyed this!

[@jfinnweddle4629]

I was very surprised to learn that the name in Arabic for the famous Moroccan city is ad-Dar al-Bayda, lit. The White House. It was only then I realised that Casablanca had a meaning, thinly veiled by Spanish. All the more odd as Morocco had been a French colony and never ruled over by Iberians, so I had seen that words hundreds of times and just never looked at it in Spanish. It seems most languages still use Casablanca or something similar, even in informal Arabic.

[@archiproty]

Some Japanese names (transliterated) for European cities: Amusuterudamu Amsterdam Antowāpu Antwerp Borudō Bourdeaux Okkusufōdo Oxford

[@talitek]

I adore the Icelandic names for places in Europe. A lot of them come straight from the names given by the vikings 1000 years ago! Others, especially those in the UK, have been directly calqued at some point. Who knows, in an alternate universe maybe it would still be Bláland (blue land) and not Afríka!

[@AndyJugglesLanguages]

I live in Southsea (Hampshire) and it's called 南海 (Nánhǎi) in Mandarin. This is the same as South China Sea in Mandarin.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I can see why they’d go for that over a transliteration. Something like 绍斯希 would be pretty ugly.

[@jtinalexandria]

English also once used Salonica for Thessaloniki, Greece.

[@chaiyasitdhi]

I like both Krungthep and Bangkok. Bangkok is an old and a local Thai name of the place. Krungthep is, however, an abbreviated official name of capital cities of the Thai speaking Kingdoms in this region for several hundred years starting from the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

[@alloallie]

Dunedin, New Zealand and Edinburgh, Scotland are etymologically the same place. Dunedin was named after Dùn Èideann, Scottish Gaelic for Edinburgh. Also, English has quite a number of exonyms for countries. Germany, Hungary, and Finland are some that are very far from their endonyms.

[@csillamalatinszky2758]

Bratislava is called Pozsony in Hungarian, pronounced as [ˈpoʒoɲ]. And Vienna is Bécs [ˈbeːt͡ʃ]

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Those are cool! Many thanks.

[@chriswarrington7066]

The German name for Bratislava is Preßburg. Another city which used to be in the Austria-Hungarian empire is Lemberg, now the Ukrainian Lviv. There are loads of cities and towns in Poland which used to be Germany with alternative German names. Such as Danzig or Breslau. Plus the now Russian Kaliningrad which was Königsberg.

[@magyarbondi]

Well-explained video. I didn't know the Chinese have their names for Western cities, though it seems logical, given the very different pronunciation. Geographical names are a fiery subject in Central/East Europe. Multilingual city signs often get sprayed over all across Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Serbia out of the paranoia of the chauvinist part of the local population. But the fact remains, the whole region has a common history and geographical names are multilingual. We don't go to Wien, Bratislava, Warsawa and București, we go to Bécs, Pozsony, Varsó and Bukarest. Similarly, I won't get offended if they come to Budapescht, Budapešt or Budapeszt. 😅

[@chantsmantrasandrelaxation5079]

Ayers Rock - Uluru is a political change -where the original Aboriginal title has officially replaced the old European settlers nomenclature. There are, however, many place names where the original indigenous language place name was appropriated and butchered and still exists. Canberra, the capital of Australia is one. More recently, Aboriginal language names have been sought for new suburbs, streets and other geographical features and we find places like Barangaroo named after an Aboriginal woman. Finally, there are co-existing names for many places where both local indigenous language names and European Settler names are used by different cultural groups (sometimes with different intentions or purposes). Do you know which country I'm talking about? I'd hope that Australia did at least reach some brains. BTW, thanks Dave, enjoy your site.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I recognised it from the outset, having visited Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa. Thanks for all this fascinating info.

[@MrKotBonifacy]

A bit can be said about places like Madras or Bombay, which now are called Chennai and Mumbai (part of BJP's drive to "use proper, local Indian city names") even though Bombay was set up first by Portuguese (and latter built up by Britons), and apparently "Madras" was a local name of a nearby fishing village and it was just borrowed or adopted as a name for the newly made British settlement/ port/ fort. And then there's this "sensitive issue" of German exonym "Warschau", and that's why German Autobahn signs spell it "Warszawa", with "Warschau" only in smaller letters, underneath the "proper" name. Also, there's quite interesting, if tad convoluted story, on "why Italy is called Włochy in Polish" - and what on Earth does it have in common with "Wallachia" (kzbin.info/www/bejne/npjSp2B8mbWXm7c)

[@martinhughes2549]

Time to climb Y Wyddfa in the beautiful region of Eryri. Then on to Afon Dyfrydwy at Llyn Tegid before moving on to Parc genedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog. Glad I got to see Ynys Seiriol from Pen Y Gogarth.( Time to climb Snowdon in the beautiful region of Snowdonia, then on to the River Dee at Bala lake, before moving in to the Brecon Beacons national park, glad I got to see Puffin Island from the Great Orme) There is a move in Wales to use the original Welsh names rather than anglicised forms.

[@iankr]

Great stuff. I've just returned from a week's holiday in Munich / München / Minga and I was momentarily confused by a guide book entitled 'Monaco' in a tourist shop. I guess the etymology is the same (a reference to monks?).

[@SirKenchalot]

Did you really get through all that without mentioning Paris or did I just miss it? Swansea and Newport (Wales) both have local names with both shown or railway and other transport signage. What was formerly the Ivory Coast now insists on being called by the name in their native French, for some reason and various parts of Israel have names in multiple languages and multiple theologies.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Yes, I do seem to have missed out Paris, Parijs, Parigi etc.

[@barnbersonol]

Caergrawnt in Welsh is a direct translation of Grantchester but it means Cambridge. Id love to know how that came about!

[@mikeball6182]

Grumble Chester. Perhaps from Chaucer.........................?

[@fremenondesand3896]

I like how Tournai is known as Doornik to the Flemish, as I was driving through the north of Belgium and confused by the signs until I kept going south and eventually Doornik became Tournai. I don't speak a word of Flemish but I have since learned that if I take a wrong turn at Calais and end up in Vlaanderens (I think that's what the Flemish call their land) then they don't use place names I'm familiar with. They even have a different name for Lillie, which is not even part of Belgium.

[@drychaf]

There are Germanic names all the way across to Berck, near the Somme estuary. I'd love to have a book on the linguistic history of the region cross to Flanders in Belgium (not forgetting the Celtic elements too). There's a lot of architectural influence from the low countries. Presumably this spread after the French language had ousted the Flemish language, apart from in French 'Flandres', which still has some speakers today. I wonder if there was a relic affinity with Flemish people, when the architectural influences were spreading across the region.

[@mzaliwa]

The black salt pit - Yr Heledd Ddu - Northwich

[@Svensk7119]

Exonyms! I heard never heard of that word before! Bless you, sir! A good example of an old exonym is Peking. In American? Edinburrow? My favorite was Yorwick.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Thank you.

[@Svensk7119]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Thou art welcome, good sir. De Nada. Bitte. I guess I was attempting to show my poor skill with tongues, yet I couldn't remember how to say, "you're welcome" in Norwegian! I never got very far with it, and then I decided to improve mi Ess-Span-Joel.... Okay. 'Nough with the Spanglish, he said to himself. May I ask how many tongues can you speak, sir?

[@DevilDwarf165]

Finnish calls most placenames like in the source language (eg. Beijing/Peking the latter being easier to pronounce), morphing the name to match the language if need be (eg. Lyypekki for Lübeck, Viipuri for Vyborg, Kapkaupunki for Cape Town (lit.) and so on...) However what I find fascinating is the fact that places in Finland have quite interesting meanings: Lahti (EN "bay"), Seinäjoki (EN "wall river"), Turku (from Old Russian "marketplace"), Hamina (from Swedish "port, harbour", modern FI port being "satama"), Kotka (EN "eagle"), Forssa (from Swedish "fors" meaning "rapids") and so on... The naming culture also allows cursewords (especially when going North) and other intricacies which I'll not delve further into here. My favorite one is the lake Vesijärvi in Lahti. Vesi = water, järvi = lake. So there's a Water Lake in the city of Bay. :D

[@lidewijvandenbrink5223]

except for Tukholma for Stockholm and Ranska for France, since they struggle with the st and fr at the start.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Minga!!!

[@Oznej]

I'm a Swede who studied Mandarin, and I'll never forget when I came across a Chinese map of Sweden. I found many of the transliterations absolutely hilarious, especially that they attempted to catch every single consonant, which made certain names uncomfortably long. 斯德哥尔摩 sounds nothing like the [stɔ̂kːɔ̂lm] I'm used to. (Frankly, the English [ˈstɒkhəʊm] is strange enough.) The weirdest one I found was probably 克里西里安斯塔德 for Kristianstad, locally something like [kʁɪˈxʷansta].

[@Oznej]

Oh, it was actually 克里斯蒂安斯塔德 - easy to misremember, which kind of proves the point :)

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I remember doing the same with a Chinese map of England. I never imagined that someone would transliterate the names of small towns near where I grew up into Chinese.

[@barryfromperth]

I like the change in exonyms to endonyms in many East Asian place names: Peking (Beijing), Yangon (Rangoon), Canton (Guangzhou).

[@CosmicDoom47]

In modern-day Hindi, many exonyms are loaned directly from English, especially in spoken language. Though the older exonyms do remain, with varying different levels of popularity (e.g. chiin (China), angrez (English, adj), fraaNs (France, w/ nasal vowel), yoonaan (Greece), roos (Russia), etc.). It's always fun running into one in the wild (e.g. calling something French "fraaNsisii")

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Yoonaan is an interesting one. In Indonesian and Malaysian, Greece is called Yunani. It’s apparently from Persian based on Greek Ionia.

[@CosmicDoom47]

Makes sense - Hindi has had a lot of Persian influence. Even one of the endonyms for India (Hindustan / Hindustani) comes from Persian.

[@jivkoyanchev1998]

Some names that come up to my mind. Native language - Bulgarian Thessaloniki - Solun Seres - Syar Istanbul/Constantinople - Tsarigrad Edirne - Odrin Paris - Parizh Roma - Rim Constanta - Kyustendzha/Kostnitsa Giurgiu - Malko Yorgovo Kirklareli - Lozengrad Lisboa - Lisabon Athini - Atina

[@DavidFraser007]

The Czechs have some great city names. Vienna is Viden , Munich is Mnichov. Bavaria is Bavorsko and Rome is Řím. The list goes on and on.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Some great examples there.

[@davidkubecka7571]

Other interesting examples: Kodaň (Copenhagen), Remeš (Reims), Drážďany (Dresden), Lipsko (Leipzig), Řezno (Regensburg), Kostnice (Konstanz), Cáchy (Aachen), Štýrský Hradec (Graz), Benátky (Venezia), Janov (Genova), Kolín (Köln). The list could indeede go on and on :-) Actually there even is a Czech city called Kolín which I remember was quite confusing for me until my teens. Also the Germans have some interesting names for the Czech cities (well, some of them actually used to be more German than Czech...), e.g. Pilsen (Plzeň - the beer, you know), Reichenberg (Liberec), Eger (Cheb), Tetschen (Děčín), Iglau (Jihlava), Znaim (Znojmo), etc.

[@adioqier]

@@davidkubecka7571 Some of them are more common than others. It took me ages to work out that Reichenberg is actually Liberec. No one would ever use the German name. Same goes for Děcín and Ústí. Even Hřensko, though Germans unfamiliar with Czech pronounce it Renskó. No one would ever dream of (or even know that name) of saying Herrnskretschen (in fact I just had to look that one up). Plzeň is different probably because the Czech word is very similar to the German one and it would sound quite weird and pretentious to use slightly different phonemes just to sound more foreign. Note that in German the second syllable doesn't have a vowel whereas in Czech it's the first /ˈpɪlzn̩/. It's funny though thinking about it. I'd probably say Karlsbad over Karlovy Vary most of the time but would never use Brünn instead of Brno. It's really only the biggest cities in Bohemia where there is a strong preference for the German name: Prag, Karlsbad, Pilsen, Budweis. I suspect the popularity of the beer from the latter two also plays a role here :) I could not tell you the German name of Ceský Krumlov without looking it up. Dresden and Drážďany both come from the old Sorbian word for the city, Drežďany. In modern Upper Sorbian it's Drježdźany. Many city districs end in -itz or -witz showing the Slavic origin. Pozdrav z Drážďan

[@rosiefay7283]

4:03 That's cute. I wonder if they also use Szordicz/Szordycz.

[@timflatus]

It seems like every pre-Roman British kingdom had a place called "Gwent", which was generally a market town, so the Romans had to add a tribe or region name to differentiate them. As the Britons didn't have much in the way of towns, it's possible they had different place-name conventions.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

That’s fascinating.

[@cluaintarbh531]

Dublin, of course, comes from Dubh linn (black pool), but it's Irish name comes from the other settlement in the same area of Baile Átha Cliath. Are there other places in which this happens, and also where the transliteration of the name is a city/town in another country (i.e. Dubh Linn and Blackpool)?

[@nigelogilvie9450]

What about Paris / Paree? And I was in a train in Switzerland once and the destination display in the compartments said Neuchatel. Suddenly we passed a language watershed, French to German, and the display changed to Neuburg

[@PeterNGloor]

Actually it's Neuenburg.

[@michaelbednarski4601]

For Christmas, my family will be eating a nice türkiye.

[@dougcoppage8916]

Hungarians call the capital of Austria (in English: Vienna) "Bécs" (pronounced roughly "baitch").

[@MrKotBonifacy]

Polish people from the most recent emigration wave (roughly 2005-2015) living in UK, and especially those in London, used to call The Capital, jokingly, "Lądek" [ą = nasal "o"], which is a diminutive form of Polish noun "ląd" ("a land") - but it's also used in the sense "a place" or "a country" (like "the land of the dead" or "the land of seven rivers"). And then there's this small Polish spa town, Lądek Zdrój ("zdrój", or "uzdrowisko" means spa, from "zdrowie", "health'). The pun, or humorous accent of this wordplay is based on a reference to a scene in Polish "surreal/ absurd" comedy film "Miś" ("Teddy Bear", but this word "miś" is also frequently used in Polish as an endearment term - typically by females when addressing "close" males; something akin to English "ducky" - that would-be starlet in this comedy is often addressing the protagonist by "misiu", vocative of "miś"). Anyway, this guy, along with that would-be starlet he's trying to seduce, goes to a post office and places a telegram form on the counter in front of a young female clerk, who reads the address and authoritatively says: - I can't send this telegram. There's no [such] city [as] "Londyn". There's Lądek, Lądek Zdrój, innit. - Londyn - a city in England... - So why you're not telling me! - But I'm just telling you [now]... - Then I have to go now, look up! [for it]; to see where it is. Their Polish is not exactly "grammatically correct", it's more like lower classes language ("where was we") - and so is that clerk's logic and thinking (or "thinking"). You can see this scene here, kzbin.info/www/bejne/pnSolqR8Zamca6c (in case this channel/ clip is no longer available at this address just paste "nie ma takiego miasta Londyn" in YT search box). This particular scene may not seem a very funny exchange by itself, but this is yet another hilarious absurd in the whole lot of them in this comedy, and it hinges on then prevailing attitude of all "supposedly serving class" (waitresses, shopkeepers, sales assistants and such) which tended to be, back then in communist times (this comedy was shot in 1980), quite rude, arrogant and uncooperative. In this scene the protagonist is trying to impress that young wannabe cinema star (that female accompanying him there) by pretending he knows Mr Polański personally - and that he's on good terms with him, AND he may secure her a role in Polański's next movie - all of which is, of course, a total rubbish - and Polanski's address is made-up one obviously). The comedy, along with another one made by the same director ("Rejs" or "Cruise") enjoys a cult status among more than one generations, and quite a few sayings from them became catchphrases in contemporary Polish, but I digress here. Anyway, remember - there's no such city as Londyn. There's Lądek, Lądek Zdrój. ;-)

[@jonatanborowicz]

I always thought it was remarkable how Kiel and Cologne got so similar names in Polish. Kilonia and Kolonia

[@celljog]

Gothenburg

[@musodave]

Fascinating video, thanks. I’m interested in why the Italian word for Germany is Germania, but the adjective German is Tedesco - any ideas? And where does the French Allemangne/Allemand come from?

[@chassmash8903]

I think it is derived from a Germanic tribe called Alemannen or Alamannen in Southern Germany/Switzerland/Austria. Translated to French it means tous les hommes....

[@rursus8354]

My language Swedish is pretty boring in naming foreign cities. We use the French city names for a few Italian cities, Rom for Roma and Florens for Fiorence, and a couple of Swedish names for Danish cities, Köpenhamn for København, the old Swedish imperial names for Finnish cities, such as Helsingfors for Helsinki, but we usually try to use the local name for foreign large cities, such as Moskva for Moscow, Warszawa for Warsaw, London for London, Berlin for Berlin, München for München, Beijing for Beijing, Kyiv for Kyiv etc. ad infinitum.

[@JonasPertoft]

Finnish have Luntoo (London), Tukholma (Stockholm) and Pietari (St Petersburg). Besides from have funny names of countries like Ruotsi (Sweden), Saksa (Germany) and Venäjä (Russia).

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Those are very cool thank you.

[@JukkaPirinen70]

Actually it is Lontoo. And some more city and country names in Finnish: Ranska (France), Englanti (England), Irlanti (Ireland), Norja (Norway), Kööpenhamina (Copenhagen), Hampuri (Hamburg), Pariisi (Paris), Berliini (Berlin). Finally, perhaps the strangest place name of them all: Juutinrauma (Öresund)

[@ze_rubenator]

I like the Japanese name for many places, like Mexico, メキシコ (mekish(i)ko), London ロンドン (rondo(n)), Stockholm ストックホルム (s(u)tokkuhorumu) etc. Their phonotactics are so wildly different from western languages, but they seem to always try to match it phonetically. Guess that's what happens when you have a dedicated alphabet for foreign/loan words.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Those are cool examples!

[@simprove]

Interestingly the football team from Milano that wear red and black is A.C. Milan, not A.C. Milano as might be expected. Some English football commentators insist on pronouncing Milan as Mee-lan because they think it is correct. Italians would stress the second syllable I suspect.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

An interesting one. For once, the sports commentators are right. Although Milano has stress on 2nd syllable, Italians put in on first syllable of Milan. Probably in the mistaken believe that that’s where it is in English!

[@philroberts7238]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages In Shakespeare, 'The Tempest' for example, Milan tends to be pronounced 'MILL-ann', although I'm not sure if that's due to the poetic rhythm dictating a change from the everyday Elizabethan pronunciation - whatever that may have been.

[@mcicogni]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages The name of the football team is indeed pronounced in Italian with a stress on the first syllable /'milan/. I'm not sure why, although in Italian words that don't end in a vowel are quite often stressed on the penultimate syllable. It is also true that Milan in Milanese is called /mi'lan/ so people might have wanted to avoid confusion (and Milanese was of course much more widely spoken back when the football team was founded in 1899.

[@thevannmann]

The formal name for the USA in Vietnamese is Hoa Kỳ from 花旗 meaning the "flower flag" or Star-spangled banner.

[@charlo90952]

I read that many place names are Sanskrit, or PIE. Thames comes from Sanskrit tamas meaning dark dirty. It's a muddy river. Canterbury comes from Shanka-puri, Shiva's town. England and Anglesey come from Sanskrit anguli finger. River names like Dee, Don, Danube are supposedly Sanskrit. Ireland, Iona also.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

It would be PIE rather than Sanskrit. Thames does indeed seem to be cognate with Sanskrit for dark, but Canterbury seems to me to most likely came from Kent, meaning edge in Celtic languages. The -bury part is cognate with Sanskrit -puri though.

[@charlo90952]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I wonder about the PIE/Sanskrit issue. There were several 19th century books that went into this. Anacylapsis by Godfrey Higgins, India in Greece by Edward Pococke, books by Sir William Jones and others. These books are unknown or dismissed nowadays. Pococke's book talks about how nearly every topographical feature in Greece is named after places in NW India, Punjab. Afghanistan, Kashmir, Baluchistan, etc. You can find the corresponding places quite easily on Google maps. No modern historian seems to be able to accept this. Regarding Canterbury, PN Oak deconstructed it. C and S are interchangeable, like Celt. S is pronounced sh in Sanskrit. T to k is an easy interchange, and bury to puri as you say. Shanka is a name of Shiva. Oak said any country name ending in -ia is Sanskrit. That's nearly all of them. Pococke's basic point is that the names of features in the landscape have a meaning in the language in which they were named. None of the names of major rivers in Europe mean anything in their current languages. But they can all be decoded using Sanskrit. Nile means blue in Sanskrit. Ireland seems to show these connections. Tara is Sanskrit. Higgins says all the Iona islands are named after yoni because the world was divided into followers of the lingham and yoni. And so on. There's a lot of this I can't put here. Going back to the Greek names. It's amusing to see the attempts at etymology of the names because they try to use Greek to speculate on a meaning. When you discover it's named after a place in Punjab it all becomes clear.

[@EdMcF1]

I have seen reference to 'Plimude' in Portuguese, for Plymouth.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

That’s a cool one.

[@Stefan-td1pw]

Heya Dave, Thessaloniki is known as Solun in many balkan languages, but Athens doesnt get the same treatment Thought this might interest you

[@signorlo9443]

Why did we change the pronunciation of Peking, Canton, Bombay, etc.. during the past few decades to Beijing, Guangzhou, Mumbai, etc... but never changed Moscow to Moskva or Rome to Roma? Were these changes driven by the countries that wanted everyone to pronounce them their way? Also, btw Staten Island in New York is spelled with one T.

[@nicholasarrow2443]

I love 'Plaisance', the French name for Piacenza.

[@HANSMKAMP]

I am Dutch, and I use Dutch exonyms for foreign capital cities, and sometimes other important cities (that are not capital cities). In Dutch I will say Londen [ˈlɔ̝ndə(n)], Berlijn [bɛrˈlɛɪ̯n], Parijs [paˈrɛɪ̯s], Brussel [ˈbrʏsəɫ], Warschau [ˈʋɑrʃɔʊ̯], Moskou [ˈmɔskɔʊ̯], Wenen [ˈʋeːnə(n)]. These are a few capital cities. But I will try to use endonyms with foreign pronunciation for smaller and/or less important cities. In UK that is Liverpool [ˈlɪvəpuːɫ], Endinburgh [ˈɛdɪnbəɹə], Newcastle [ˈnjuːkɑːsɫ]. In Germany that is Köln [kʰœln], Hamburg [ˈɦambʊɐk], München [ˈmʏnçən] or (incorect) [ˈmynʃən]. In Russia that is Нижний Новгород [ˈnʲiʑnʲɪ ˈnɔvgɐrɐt], but Sint-Petersburg [sɪnt ˈpeːtərzbʏrx]. In China that is Peking [ˈpeːkɪŋ] rather than Beijing [pêɪ̯dʒíŋ] (pronunciation may be incorrect) or something.

[@zak3744]

It can apply even within the same country too. I grew up in the South of England, so my accent has the 'TRAP-BATH split' where some words use the 'long a' sound /ɑ:/ instead of the 'short 'a' sound /a/ that accents from the North of England tend to have. /pɑ:θ/ versus /paθ/ for "path", /lɑ:st/ versus /last/ for "last" and so on. So to me, the city of Newcastle was always /njʉwkɑːsəl/. But then I moved to the North-East and it seemed weird to use that pronunciation in an environment where all the locals have the 'short a' in the city's name. (There is also often a different stress pattern: whether the exact pronunciation is /ˈnjʉw.kɑːs.əl/ or /ˈnjʉw.kas.əl/ or /ˈnʉw.kɑːs.əl/, most British accents from other places put the stress on the initial syllable, but it's very common for Newcastle locals to put the stress on the second syllable instead: /njʉw'kas.əl/) So when in the North-East, I started using the local pronunciation for the city. Obviously this didn't change the rest of my accent though, just the specific place name. One day I was talking about the old, stone, historic building in the middle of Newcastle and one of my friends was laughing at me because I was calling it /njʉwkasəl kɑːsəl/, with one pronunciation of "castle" in the name and a different one in the normal word!

[@arbataxiansoul]

The isle of Formosa, i.e. Taiwan, is my favourite as in my native language "formosa" is the female form of the adjective "curvy" 😊

[@Ezullof]

1:30 french is Terre de Feu, not Tierre de Feu (tierre isn't word, there's "tiers" meaning "a third")

[@michaelbednarski4601]

I am still amazed at all the German town/city names east of the Oder-Neisse. Then again, why do we English call it the Oder-Neisse rather than the Odra-Nysa. Isn't it Neiße?

[@Drumsgoon]

Nieuw Amsterdam!

[@Rfoz51]

Poland has some really funny pronunciations like Mikołów which is pronounced Mikawoooooof

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

😀

[@barnbersonol]

Best one is lodz pronounced woodge. Tortoise is zolw, pronounced zhoof.

[@maccwosser]

I like the Spanish for Aachen (Germany) which is Aquisgran

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I only discovered that recently. It’s a good one.

[@joelhelmer145]

Aachen is "Aquisgrán" in Spanish, always loved our version of it.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

That’s fantastic! I wish I’d known that one.

[@javierhualde739]

I always found it funny too! According Wikipedia the name comes from Latin Aquae granni, referring to Grannus, the Celtic god that was worshipped at the place's hot springs: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen

[@peter_oso]

Yes, it survived in Polish too, Akwizgran.

[@chriswarrington7066]

In French Aachen is I think Aix-la-Chapelle

[@stefanopalliggiano6596]

Aquisgrana in Italian

[@jameneburch2832]

Praha!

[@larsfrandsen2501]

As a Danish expat (35 years and counting), I never tire of the various names given to the Danish capitol, Copenhagen. Some now spell it with a K instead of a C. Doesn’t make it any more Danish. København. I don’t know what (or if) Copen or Kopen means (anything) in English. Probably rubbish English anyway. It doesn’t mean anything in Danish.

[@BobWitlox]

Luik / Liège / Lüttich

[@jackw8268]

Hi Dave! I sent an email regarding meeting for language training some days back but I havent gotten a response yet. Just letting you know im interested as someone from socal! Thanks, Jack

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Hi Jack. Sorry I missed that. I'll hunt it out in a sec.

[@andrewst9797]

🦃is now officially called "Türkyie"😅

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

😂

[@sweetgrasshopper]

Laibach!

[@aresee8208]

Staten Island in English has one "t."

[@lynnedoherty6047]

How did we get Madras from Chennai?

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

We got it from Mādarasanpattanam, a nearby fishing village.

[@ThermoMan]

Edinburrow! Haha

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

We’ll spotted!

[@PeterNGloor]

I have never succeded in grasping the reason why River Cam is pronounced differently that Cam-Bridge. Why is it Came-Bridge?

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Good question! … to which I don’t know the answer.

[@macart5429]

The capital city of my Minecraft nation, Firsta has many exonyms in many different languages. All of them mean “Strengthened Land”. Novekian(official conlang of my nation): Firsta English: Strengthened Land Spanish: Tierra Fortalecida Italian: Terreno Rinforzato Dutch: Versterkte grond

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Cool

[@badusername9903]

im american and i call it edinbruh, should i start using the american pronunciation to be more authentic to my culture?

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Except when you are actually in the UK, you probably should use the American version. I try to remember to say Los Angeleeze when I'm in Britain so that people don't think I've gone native.

[@badusername9903]

edinbowrg,,, i still might continue doing it so people dont think im talking about the american cities with european names. its BERlin, not berLIN in northern new hampshire

[@danielshapiro3612]

Countries : hebrew. France צרפת en phonrtic tsarfat . Spain ספרד Sfarad ..Greece יוון Yavan. Equatorial Guinea גינאה המשוונית Ginea hamashvani. Cyprus קפריסין kafrisin. Egypt מצרים mitsra'im

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I can see the last few, but wonder how they came up with tsarfat and Sfarad.

[@danielshapiro3612]

Tsarfat is mentioned several times in the bible as a town in Lebanon. Sfarad is mentioned in one place as well, refering to spain. In that verse, however, tsarfat is mentioned, once again, as well. Probably in the middle ages some rabbinical commentators saw that verse as referring to neighboring places.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

@@danielshapiro3612 Wow. Fascinating.

[@Tsass0]

Jorvik is York, all us descendance of old Jorvikshire folk can tell u

[@rubenofthemoon6805]

Lizard man Dave in the intro 😮😅

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I’m going to use that effect in my next video, as if happens.

[@rubenofthemoon6805]

@@DaveHuxtableLanguages looking for to the next video. Love your content. Hilarious 😆

[@willhovell9019]

Bring back Leghorn & Peking

[@DadgeCity]

The French should start calling Lincoln "Nicole" again, if they ever did.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I’m sure some of them must have done at some point.

[@aresee8208]

And then there is the pheomenon where some non-English speakers try to demand Americans stop referring to their own country, in their own American language as America. Go figure.

[@gordonburns8731]

Most Americans refer to the spelling EDINBURGH, as EDINBURG! It is not! It's pronounced EDINBRUH

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I’ve mostly heard Edinburrow from my fellow Americans.