European City Names and why Köln is Cologne

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.

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