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From: gmb@natcorp.ox.ac.uk (Glynis Baguley)
Subject: Re: Anglicizing non-English Name?
Message-ID: <1995Mar22.141108.18789@onionsnatcorp.ox.ac.uk>
Originator: gmb@onions.natcorp
Organization: British National Corpus, Oxford University, GB
References: <troyer-130395113125@tcrmac.mitre.org>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:11:08 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <troyer-130395113125@tcrmac.mitre.org> troyer@mitre.org (Tom Royer) writes:
> This may be a FAQ, so feel free to flame me.
> 
> I've always wondered what the justification was for the
> Anglicization of the spelling and pronunciation of non-English names.
> 
> Italian cases in point:
> 
> English:  Florence          Italian:  Firenze
> English:  Rome              Italian:  Roma
> English:  Naples            Italian:  Napoli
> 
> How come we don't use the Italian spelling and pronunciation?

Because all languages are constantly changing, basically. To answer
the question in detail, I (or you) would have to find the earliest
forms of the names in both languages, and we'd probably find that they
were very similar. I believe that Florence was once called
`Florentia', or something similar, which looks very Latin. Compare
Italian `fiore' (flower) with Latin `flora' - the Latin /l/ changed or
disappeared in Italian. So `Florence' is actually closer to the
original than is `Firenze'. Just as `flower' and `fiore' are similar,
through being derived from the same root, but not identical, so
`Florence' and `Firenze' are similar but not identical.

As with `flower', I think it's possible that `Florence' (though I
don't know) came into English via Norman French rather than directly.




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