Evening star., 1909-06-06
INTERNATIONAL PLACE NAMES
WHY "FIRENZA" IN ITALIAN
AND "FLoRENCE" IN ENGLISH.
London Is "Londres" in French and
"Londra" in Italian-Germans
Call Vienna Wien"
From the Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Inuuirer has received communica-
tion an answer to which in this conspicu-
Gus portion of the paper will prove inter
esting, we doubt not, to a good many
other persons than this particular corre-
spondent, especially at this time of the
vear when the transatlantic steamers
are going out with we'll filled cabins.
Parenthetically. let us recommend 10 our
correspondent a daily perusal of EVERY
body's Column" where interesting mat
ter of this and many another Kind are
continually discussed.
II am somewhat of traveller, the
communication runs, land many Euro
pean cities are familiar to me- Wha'
bothers me is that the names are speiled
so differently on the maps. 1t is aui.e
belieyable that the Italians know now 10
spell and pronounce the names OF theli
own towns; therefore | have no quarfei
with them when the speak OF FlrehZa
But is it possible that the Engllsn-spedk-
ing people cannot get nearer To r~iitnHa ~
than Florence? In England the biggest
city is called London; why couldn
France have adopted that name without
changing it to Londres, or Italy to Lon
dra? Why must we have vienna Wheh
the Germans say Wien? Then we have
koln, The Hague and La Haye, Geneva
and Gent, Bucharest and Bucharest. ana
Strasbourg and StrasSburg; OF course.
there must be a reason for these aliases
won't YOU tell me what it is?'
Prefacing our reply with the remark
that so many-phased a subject could be
more satisfactorily handled in the roomy
pa ges of a magazine than in the limited
space of newspaper column, we "ouiu
saw. in general terms. that historical as
l. 1r lf~Fl lrsa0 =
mercial transactions and pathological in
fuences, on the one hand. and, on the
other complacent ignorance. national
prejudice, contemptuous indifference OF
actual hatred, not to speak or the Inmate
SIoyenlineSS of the genus Man in matters
of speech. may be set down as so many
causes of the hotch-potch condition of ouI
modern International Typographical no
menclature.
Some of the Examples.
The examples cited by our correspond
ent. while by no means typically exhaust
| i've. are fair specimens of their respective
kinds.
Thus, in the case of Firenza, it is no
that English-speaking people Couldn't e.
| nearer to FirenZa than Florence bu
rather that the Italians wouldn't go near
er Florence than Firenza. As matter o
fact, the Latin etymon flor produced il
Il
French fleur, the English flower, and late
on, in the same natural way. the medieva
Latin Florentia. the Spanish Florenci;
and the English and French Florence
| but contrariwise, In the course of tim
the Italians. who have a special objection
to certain combinations of oonsonants
4 softened the 'Fl' in Florenta to Fl
| and made 1t Fiorenza (even as they al
| tered f1umen to flume. pluvia to pioggia
etc.) and ultimately to Firenza. Foreign
nations. on their part, saw no cogent rea
son why they should give up their frs
| love for this latter-day offspring of Ital
| ian idiosyncrasy: and so II came to pas
| that F,renza Is now the solitary represen
tative of self-constituted minority No
| is the case of koln very different from
| that of FirenZa, open as ii is 10 the crit
| icism that 1t Is not quite SO close a cop,
of its Latin prototype colonia as ths
French and English Cologne or the Ital
ian and Spanish Colona.
With regard to London, France coulc