pudge's Journal: Turin

Mad props to Jim Lehrer of the NewsHour for resisting the peer pressure to call Turin "Torino." We don't call Milan, Rome, Naples, Florence, and so on "Milano," "Roma," "Napoli," and "Firenze." In English, it's not "Torino," it's Turin.

Update: More information.

Not unless

[StalinsNotDead]

you're ordering off an Olive Garden menu.

Re:Not unless

[mackil]

Yeah they love it when you do that. Of course I don't always end up with what I thought I ordered... but hey I feel cultured.

I disagree

[sulli]

When traveling in Italy, even when speaking English, one refers to most cities by their Italian names: Firenze, Napoli, and yes, Torino.

Non English speakers don't typically come up with non-English names for US cities (exception being Nueva York and of course la Nouvelle-Orleans, but it was named that way before the Anglos came along). Why keep English names when the native language ones both sound better and are universally known?

Re:I disagree

[jdavidb]

It's not universally known. I would never have known that Torino is the city of heard of only in connection with "the shroud of Turin" if I hadn't been informed when I first heard where the Olympics were going to be this year.

Re:I disagree

[pudge]

When traveling in Italy, even when speaking English, one refers to most cities by their Italian names: Firenze, Napoli, and yes, Torino.

First: so what? We're not in Italy.

Second: actually, many natives of the area call it "Turin." It's not an Anglicization (although today, it is more commonly used by English speakers).

Non English speakers don't typically come up with non-English names for US cities (exception being Nueva York and of course la Nouvelle-Orleans, but it was named that way before the Anglos c

Wikipedia

[jdavidb]

Wikipedia seems to be calling it "Turin," as well. (At least at the moment.) I was actually surprised. There's sort of a systematic tendency there to give more credence to any view that suggests that a non-English-standard spelling is more appropriate. There have been battles over the names of Ukrainian places, and whether Mecca should be called "Makkah."

NPR did a similar story on Thursday

[cascadefx]

I think it was on the morning news on NPR on Thursday where they did a story on the schizophrenia induced by the Olympics and NBC's use of Torrino.

Good point.

I wonder if NBC made the choice because Turin sounds too close to "urine"? Probably not.