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Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

> Louvain (“Leuven”)

The correct name of the city is Leuven: it is a Flemish city, not a Wallonian one. Using French names for Flemish cities is just wrong.

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These are called exonyms and there's nothing wrong with them. The Italian city of Firenze is anglicized as Florence. The anglicized Jesus Christ is latinized as Iesus Christus, hellenized as Iesous Christos, aramaicized as Yeshua Mshiha. People do this all the time with tons of words and especially with proper nouns. It's completely normal and okay.

I love exonyms when they are native. As you note, the English name for the Italian city is Florence (so too the proper English words are Turkey, Kiev and Peking, not Turkiye, Kyiv or Beijing).

I see no reason at all to use the French name for a Flemish city when writing in English. When writing in French, sure.

But Florence is the French name of that city. Or Rome. I don't really understand the difference with Louvain.

What was it called in 1914?

Both. Belgium is multi-lingual (NL,FR,DE), so most cities and bigger towns have 2 or 3 names. In fact, today, most streets in Brussels have 2 names. So do a lot of big local companies

Most local inhabitants would have called it Leuven, as it is a Flemish city. The rich people at that time, both inside and outside the city, heavily promoted French, and pushed only the French names in politics and international communication.

Even today, this is a very touchy subject.

Just some clarification on what Belgium's multi-linguality means exactly:

Flanders is Dutch-speaking.

Wallonia is primarily French-speaking, except for a small part of it which is German-speaking (

The Brussels Capital Region is officially bi-lingual Dutch/French, but in practice it's almost completely French. In restaurants, shops, ... you can be sure to find people who can help you in French, but almost never in Dutch. Police, hospitals, ... are supposed to be bi-lingual, but good luck getting good help if you speak Dutch but not French.

In most places, you'll only encounter one language: your own native language. Only Brussels is supposed to be bi-lingual.

Many cities do have two or three names, but that's not because those two or three languages are actually spoken in that city.

Out of those, Florence and Turkey are proper exonyms. Kiev and Kyiv are direct romanizations of the Russian and Ukrainian names. Other languages have actual exonyms for the city, such as Kiova in Finnish and Kijow in Polish. Peking is a romanization of an older pronunciation, while Beijing is closer to the modern pronunciation of the same name.

They are wrong. This is like calling Gdansk, Danzig.

You mean like calling the Netherlands, Holandia?

There's a lot of exonyms in Polish in everyday use.

It's normal, but it causes some problems: people using the wrong exonym or failing to find something they're looking for. And it seems to be gradually going out of fashion.

Which places in Belgium have an English Wikipedia page with an exonym as the page title? I can find Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Ostend. Are there others?

I wouldn't be very surprised if a couple of those went out of fashion in English over the coming decades, just like "Brunswick", "Francfort" and "Aix-la-Chapelle" went out of fashion. And "Basle" is on the way out, isn't it?

A bit off topic, but you had me curious: the first exonym that I could think about was Quebec City, which is called in French Ville de Québec. The interesting part though is that the official name of the city in both languages is Québec, lacking the Ville or the City. Is this an exonym though, since its Canadians who have come up with both? Probably depends on who you speak to.

Antwerp.

There's nothing wrong with exonyms in principle. However using "Florence" instead of "Florencja" in a Polish text would sound weird.

If you add historical conflict to it then it can get much worse. "Warschau" in a non-German text would make many Polish people angry because of memories of forced Germanization.

The point is that using Florence or Cologne in an English text doesn’t sound weird at all even though they are (were) French names.

Back then, a large proportion of Flemish intellectuals (including my grandparents) were French-speaking, which is a reason why there were so many French students and professors in Leuven/Louvain. Therefore I think that, in the context of the article, the "wrongness" of calling the city Louvain is not as clear-cut as you suggest.

Total aside: I have been playing Crusader Kings repeatedly using Leuven as the home city for my character's dynasty. I don't know why I zeroed in on the city, but I have done over 30 run-throughs so far. (Yes, that is a little obsessive.)

First starting as Count of Leuven, then building up to become Duke of Brabant, then King of Lotharingia, then the Holy Roman Emperor.

Now, having this historical context, I want to visit.

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