Talk:Danish exonyms

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[Untitled][edit]

Most of these I've never heard of, not even though I know the places and so on. The Danish-ialised spellings of e.g. Lübeck are also way off; Norwegian would be a language doing this sort of thing, Danish adopts original spellings a lot more. Also the German towns are often only used in Danish forms if they are very northern, that is in the area occupied by Denmark before 1864. (donpedro55@gmail.com) Peter

By your own admission, you don't seem to know a lot about the subject of exonmys. So I don't quite get your point. The nature of exonyms is that they are not the same as the local spelling/version. Travelbird 23:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the Italian cities are not called so in Danish. Genova is called Genova and not Genua, Milano is called Milano and not Mailand, and Torino is called Torino and not Turin. These are German names for the cities and not Danish. Vistor 12:27, 30 October 2006

Florens?[edit]

In the text, it tells that Florence (or Firenze, as it is called in Italian) is called Florens in Danish. That's hardly correct. The name Florens was in use in former times. Nowadays, the Danes call it Firenze. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.198.211.203 (talk) 19:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

A mess[edit]

This article has become a mess because of people removing information due to their own respective gut feelings.

We can all have our own ideas about what is oldfashioned and what is not. Some names have randomly been tagged as "archaic" and others have received lengthy disclaimers. Among them "Bryssel" and "Helsingfors". I am Danish and use "Bryssel" and "Helsingfors" - I realise that "Bryssel" isn't common, but it's hardly archaic.

On the other hand none of the Greenlandic names are tagged ad "archaic" although they aren't really used anymore since Danish authorities and media seem to prefer the Greenlandic names.

I agree with the editors that few Danish people use "Genf", "Florens", "Mailand" etc. But until recently these names have been completely acceptable. So by all means include that information, but I see no reason to omit them from the list altogether. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.163.93.206 (talk) 12:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, and most of these names are occasionally used by historically-conscious or cuturally conservative people (and still understood!). Most Central and Southern European placenames in older Danish usage were borrowed from German. Bryssel is most likely not borrowed directly from Dutch Brussel, but from German Brüssel, simply replacing the German ü with Danish y. The name Bryssel is still widely used by a minority of about 10-15 % of Danish texts, which a simple web search will reveal. The Danish newspaper database Infomedia is also useful, as well as Korpus 2000. --Sasper (talk) 11:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that Mailand is still understood. A web search restricted to pages in Danish turns up personal names and company names. And one hit where Mailand refers to the city: a dictionary entry saying German name for Milano. (Disregarding pages not actually in Danish.) --Klausok (talk) 06:16, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Country names[edit]

Why is there not a single country name listed? Names of countries are the exonyms most often heard. They are also often entirely unlike the English names (e.g. Tyskland, Letland, Estland, Grækenland), though many just have an -en ending (Polen, Italien, Spanien, Indien).

--Klausok (talk) 07:12, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most entries are not exonyms[edit]

By the definition given in the wikipedia article on exonyms, most of the entries are not exonyms

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.

Most of the German names, for example, are minor variations in spelling which is more often than not, due to differences in spelling tradition and/or letters available or due to very slight variation in pronunciation. The form of most of the names are identical and so is the pronunciation. I would expect larger differences in pronunciation within Germany than the Danish names describe.

The article gives example of alternative names for London in various language. All of these have larger differences in both pronunciation or spelling the majority of the German place names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.130.79.38 (talk) 02:02, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A minor variation in spelling is a "differ[ence] in form". Still, I haven't yet seen a serious answer to this question: why do we need a list of Danish forms of place-names more than we need a list of Danish words for spices or engine parts? —Tamfang (talk) 15:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]