Well, by these measures then, ours was considered significant enough that
the Chinese didn't even transliterate the local name and then try to find
nice characters -- they simply gave it their own name as if it were a
Chinese city itself (because, to some extent, it was.)
San Francisco: Jiu jin shan (Old Gold Mountain).
Yes, I know, there is also a more recent transliteration that's used for
formal purposes such as Chinese airline guides, but the popular name is pure
Chinese. And, yes, I know that the name referred to the region generically,
as the boundaries existed in the minds of the Chinese, rather than to the
specific political boundaries drawn by the local government. Still, New
York, London, Paris, Rome, all are transliterations, whether considered
regionally or more strictly, but Jiu Jin Shan is all Chinese. I'm sure there
were other Western cities given pure Chinese names, but I don't know of any
such names that are still the most common popular name today.
__Glen Perkins__
The Japanese had a Japanese name for it, too: Sou Kou (Mulberry Harbor). I'm
afraid I don't know any Cantonese, but the since the Mandarin (sang1) and
Korean (sang) pronunciations of this mulberry character are so close to
"San", I can't help but wonder if the old Japanese name isn't a Japanese
pronunciation of somebody's abbreviation of some early Chinese name created
by transliteration. These days, few Japanese call it anything other than
"san furanshisuko(u)".
----- Original Message -----
From: <Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com>
To: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 11:51 AM
Subject: RE: Place names in foreign languages
> >[Alain] To place the debate on a less Euro-centric point of view, I am
> >particularly proud that my city and my state was given a Chinese name (by
> >phonetic proximity) that has a special meaning in Mandarin.
> > Québec = Kui Bei Ke [the victor of the Great North]
>
> Lucky guy you are! My city's Chinese name is:
> Milan = Mi-Lan [rice-orchid]
>
> That is even sillier than Leg-Horn...
>
> Ciao. Marco
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alain [SMTP:alb@sct.gouv.qc.ca]
> > Sent: 1999 October 11, Monday 17.59
> > To: Unicode List
> > Subject: Re: Place names in foreign languages
> >
> > À 08:03 1999-10-11 -0700, Doug Ewell a écrit :
> > >John Cowan wrote:
> > >
> > >> Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com scripsit:
> > >>
> > >>> In Italy people are proud when their cities (e.g. Roma=Rome,
> > >>> Milano=Milan, Torino=Turin) have traditional names in other
> > >>> languages, especially if they are smaller cities with a long history
> > >>> (e.g Mantova=Mantua, Siracusa=Syracuse). On the other hand, people
> > >>> are very disappointed to discover that their cities (e.g. Bologna,
> > >>> Bari, Cagliari, Monza) are called the same abroad, as if they "din't
> > >>> deserve an English name", like small province towns.
> >
> > [John]
> > >> How about Livorno = English Leghorn?
> >
> > [Doug]
> > >Residents of Livorno should be especially proud, since their city has
> > >not only an English name, but an exceptionally silly one at that.
> >
> >
> > [Alain] To place the debate on a less Euro-centric point of view, I am
> > particularly proud that my city and my state was given a Chinese name
(by
> > phonetic proximity) that has a special meaning in Mandarin.
> >
> > Québec = Kui Bei Ke [the victor of the Great North]
> > city of Québec = Kui Bei Ke Shi
> > [the city of the victor of the Great North]
> >
> > Much can be said about this name... In Algonquian languages, it means
> > "where the waters narrow" [personal comment: the St.Lawrence River
narrows
> > to 3 km wide only in front of the city (; ]...
> >
> > A legend says that the French geographer Samuel de Champlain (the same
who
> > invented the "loch" method, one of the first methods to determine
> > longitude), the founder of the city in 1608, when he arrived at this
> > strait, would also have said in old French: « Qué bec ! » (« Quel bec
! »,
> > in mordern French, which means: « What a beak! » -- the same meaning as
> > the
> > Amerindian denomination, from another point of view).
> >
> > Names bear a lot of humanity, indeed...
> >
> > Alain LaBonté
> > Québec
>
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