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European City Names and why Köln is Cologne

August 20, 2009 By James Clark 4 Comments

Many cities in Europe are spelt differently in English to how they are actually spelt. For example Firenze in Italian is Florence in English.

First time visitors to Europe may not be aware of different spellings for city names. Some name changes are obvious enough as only a small change is made. Roma becomes Rome for example, or an umlaut or accent is dropped, so Zürich becomes Zurich.

Some aren’t so obvious though. You might be Eurailing through Germany on your way to Cologne, not realising that you should have got off at Köln (which can also be written as koeln). In this case where the umlaut is dropped the name is respelled to represent to its phonetic spelling.

Cologne Station

It is not just English that changes names to suit. Most languages will spell a city in their own way to make it sound phonetically correct to them. For example London can be spelt around Europe as:

Londen (Dutch)
Londra (Albanian, Italian, Maltese, Romanian, Romansh, Turkish)
Londres (Catalan, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Ladino)
Londona (Latvian)
Londonas (Lithuanian)
Londyn (Polish)
Londýn (Czech, Slovak)
Lontoo (Finnish)
Lundúnir (Icelandic)

Here is a list of some European cities in the original and English spelling.

Antwerpen
Baile Ath Cliath
Bâle
Béal Feirste
Beograd
Bruxelles
Bucuresti
Caerdydd
Casnewydd
Den Haag
Dunkerque
Firenze
Genève
Genova
Göteborg
Ieper
København
Köln
Lisboa
Luzern
Milano
München
Napoli
Nürnberg
Oporto
Oświeçim
Plzen
Praha
Roma
Sevilla
Torino
Venezia
Warszawa
Wien
Zürich
Antwerp
Dublin
Basel
Belfast
Belgrade
Brussels
Bucharest
Cardiff
Newport
The Hague
Dunkirk
Florence
Geneva
Genoa
Gothenburg
Ypres
Copenhagen
Cologne
Lisbon
Lucerne
Milan
Munich
Naples
Nuremberg
Porto
Auschwitz
Pilsen
Prague
Rome
Seville
Turin
Venice
Warsaw
Vienna
Zurich

Filed Under: Travel Tips Tagged With: language

About James Clark

James Clark is the founder of Nomadic Notes. He has been a digital nomad since 2003, and Nomadic Notes features trip reports, train travel articles, and where to stay guides. He writes about transport and urban development at Future Southeast Asia. Subscribe to the weekly travel newsletter.

Comments

  1. Jeff Hint says

    October 14, 2020 at 9:43 pm

    In most cases I’m for spelling city names the way they are spelled in their country. If we do spell them differently it should be so it sounds as close as possible to the original.
    I’m not sure if translations should be used for proper names either. A place or person was given a specific name. A translation may be the equivalent but it is not the same.

    Reply
    • Liviu says

      December 10, 2020 at 4:27 pm

      Totally agree!!!

      Reply
    • roe says

      May 3, 2022 at 4:31 am

      I disagree because like some place names are just hard to read/pronounce in other languages.

      Reply
  2. Jedoens Mueckenfett says

    September 25, 2022 at 11:38 pm

    Cologne was a Roman outpost established in 50AD and it’s original name was Colonia Agrippina Agrippinensis plus some more words (look it up if interested).
    The change from Colonia took place over the years just like the name of Los Angeles changed from the original Spanish one to LA.

    Reply

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Hi, I’m James Clark, and I've been travelling the world since 2003 while running a location independent travel business. Nomadic Notes is a travel blog featuring travel guides and notes from my travels.

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