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Comment by bleakcabal | Hacker News Reader

The language laws regarding signs state that french must either be the first and most prominent language on signs or the only language on signs.

This applies to text and common nouns. Not cities, trademarks or proper names.

Home Depot is still called Home Depot on Quebec signs. While some companies will put a French noun next to their English names, this isn't required.

As for a sign with Three Rivers, Trois-Rivières is a proper name, you don't usually translate those just like we don't translate people's name.

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We sorta-kinda translate or mangle some names, don't we? I've often wondered why the English name for "München" is "Munich"... it's not even that close and doesn't mean anything in English.

I hate to be that guy, but you're thinking about endonyms and eponyms.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonym_and_endonym:

The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines:

Endonym: Name of a geographical feature in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the feature is located.

Exonym: Name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well-established language of that area where the geographical feature is located.[2]

For example, China, India and Germany are the English exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Zhongguo, Bharat and Deutschland, respectively.

There's no need to hate being the guy who introduced me to the proper terminology. I like knowing the proper terminology.

> I've often wondered why the English name for "München" is "Munich"... it's not even that close and doesn't mean anything in English.

"Its native name, München, is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning 'by the monks' place'." [0]

Relatedly, it's "Monaco" in Italian, so Monaco the principality is "Montecarlo."

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich

Historically us Brits were not very good at foreign names, Leghorn vs Livorno for example. In some cases though the name has changed and we use one not in current use, eg Danzig vs Gdansk. Spelling was less standardised too.

It's far closer than Sverige -> Sweden, though. To us it may seem there's little rhyme or reason, but there is probably some logic behind it. :)

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