Talk:List of Latin names of cities

What is the point of this? New London, Connecticut does not have a Latin name. If this ever includes non-European cities that were actually around under the Romans, then it might be fine, but translating modern names of cities into Latin is pretty useless. Adam Bishop 23:45, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You missed the History Channel show about the Roman conquest of Connecticut, I see. Actually, most of these names have been used somewhere or another by Neo-Latinists. Most of them come from internal Roman Catholic documents prior to Vatican II. I have a small handbook in Latin concerning church discipline dated 1942 issued by the "Archiepiscopus Ludovicopolitanus" (the Archbishop of Louisville, KY). The ones I added are ones I have seen either online or in print somewhere. A small handful of people continue to write Latin, and they have to Latinize contemporary names. -- Smerdis of Tlön 14:22, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well I suppose that makes sense...you should probably mention that in the article though. And would you just include ones that have actually been used, or the names of every possible city in Latin? Adam Bishop 16:51, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The ones I added (didn't start this) are ones I have seen, either in documents or used on various Latin mailing lists. I've also added a number of notes on the "rules" (rather informal) of their formation. -- Smerdis of Tlön 20:34, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think that the Roman Catholic angle is interesting here, since all cities with a Roman Catholic episcopal see has a Latin name, which to some extent is in use. All of them are found in the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican's yearbook. The problem with this list is that it differs from the Catholic usage, e.g. 'Vasingtonia instead of Vashingtonia, Cansae, Civitas instead of Kansanopolitanis etc. If the Catholic use of Latin name is the main reason to keep the page, it should be used throughout the article, I think.

They're also used in the scientific names of plants and animals. —Pengo 06:22, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Sources needed

I've edited this article, to correct some obvious mistakes in the Latin. "Africa Australia" puzzled me, until I realised that Auatralia was a mistype for Australis meaning "South". But reflecting further, the number of errors made me wonder as to the accuracy of the sources. There's a danger that people just invent names for the purpose of such a list. I'm not accusing current contributors, who claim to have found the names cited in the literature, but it could be a danger that people would invent names for this article, which would severely undermine the authoritativeness of Wikipedia in this respect. I would like to see sources quoted for the various names, which would help hte reader to judge how reliable they are. It would also throw an interesting light on different approaches to Latinization - for instance why are some cities called "Urbs" and others "Civitas" (two alternative translations of city with rather different meanings)? rossb 07:38, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to see evidence that these names are in use; I suspect that some of them are invented by the contributors. —Tamfang (talk) 05:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Cities that were part of the Roman empire

North Africa and the Levant were part of the Roman empire. I do know that Tingis was the name of Roman Tangier. What names were used for Algiers and Damascus at the time?

List of city name changes says that Algiers was Icosium; as for Damascus, well, you wouldn't believe it —Tamfang (talk) 03:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

V and W

The article state: "The words are respelled to eliminate non-Latin letters; hence Washington becomes Vasingtonium. Note that "V" in Latin is pronounced as an English "W" There was no W in Latin."

Historically speaking, isn't it quite the other way round??!

Letter W (formerly the digraph uu or vu) is actually quite ancient, and Latin (at least medieval and renaissance Latin) actually did use it quite extensively, especially in germanic proper names and loanwords such as Willelmus or werra (war, whence e.g. Italian guerra).

On the other hand, until the 17th-18th centuries, letter 'V' did not exist as a separate letter from U, either in Latin or any other European languages: U and V where one and the same letter, whose uppercase shape was V and lowecase shape was either v or u, depending whether it was word-initial or not.

Beside that, the translation VasingtoniUM for Washington is quite odd, especially if you use it as an example! The English suffix -ton is normally Latinized in -tonia (cmp. Bostonia), and everybody knows that the Latin for Washington is actually Washingtonia (also a botanical genus).

-- User:Cingar 12:32, 5 Oct 2006 (UTC)

> I think it depends on the time. I know that W was in use in Medieval Latin, like Wallia means Wales for instance, 2601:647:C803:B0A0:B9C1:F208:14E1:1357 (talk) 22:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Translations

I'd like to figure out what the actual Latin for "Calgary" is. The Roman Catholic Church uses "Calgariensis" as the adjective, but - and get this - I found one reference that calls the city "Sinus Agri", which appears to be a direct calque of the English translation "bay farm". The university does not have a preferred translation, as its official documents refer to the city in English and Scots Gaelic. --68.144.100.111 19:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Calgariensis suggests either Calgaria or Calgarium. I'd prefer the former, myself. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:10, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Post-Classical Latin

There should be more on the role of "-ensis" -- this suffix wasn't all that commonly used in Classical Latin (from what I can tell), but in post-Classical Latin it became an all-purpose geographical adjective ending, attachable to any placename to form a Latinized adjective (note, not a noun as such, though sometimes adjectives are used as nouns). AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, in post-Classical Latin, "civitas" often seems to be used to mean "city", though in Classical Latin that was actually only a rather rarely-used meaning of the word... AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

bafflement

These two sentences are hard to parse:

One example is London, Ontario which can be translatable to Londinium in Latin, while the rest of the other non-Latin languages like Greek and French for other Londons that are not London, England is spelt "London" (from English).

Calling this a sentence is a bit generous. ;) I'm amazed to find that it is not a result of multiple inattentive revisions, but was written exactly like that, five years ago.

Here are the names that are listed in Latin and its modern meaning on the right for the world, except for Europe, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Kurdistan.

Aside from sloppy grammar, what does "for the world" mean? Does the "except" clause mean that this list was once conceived as containing only names for places not known to the Romans? – I see that this was the lead sentence of the original stub; as it has been superseded in that role, I'll remove it. —Tamfang (talk) 04:45, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I've removed both sentences. —Tamfang (talk) 05:29, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

the first

The first places that needed Latin names were encountered by Bible translators, ...

No, the first places that needed Latin names were in Latium; followed by any place where Romans had any interest. —Tamfang (talk) 18:20, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

W

Quote: "The words are respelled to eliminate non-Latin letters; hence Washington becomes Vasingtonium. There is no W in Latin, but in classical Latin, "V" is pronounced as an English "W"."
In New latin, "W" (or "VV") is also used in names (of places, regions, countries), and often two forms (one with "V" and one with "W" (or "VV") might exist. For example, the German region Westphalia (German: Westfalen, Westphalen) is known as "Vestphalia" or "Westphalia" in New Latin.
Additionally, in New Latin texts also German umlauts and German sch do appear, e.g. Göttingen is also spelled Göttinga in New Latin besides Goettinga and Gottinga. Of course, that might be barbaric and poor Latin, but it's used. Although, such usages might be restricted to real Germanic languages, i.e. excluding English because of The Chaos. -84.161.4.178 (talk) 10:40, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

What about medieval latin? 2601:647:C803:B0A0:B9C1:F208:14E1:1357 (talk) 22:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Split article

I suggest splitting the article. I would like to see names that the Romans did use, and another one (a separate article or section) for these Neo-Latin names. To those who study history, these Neo-Latin names are of little interest, but historical Roman names useful. For those who study Latin today, a separate list of Neo-Latin place names would also be helpful. I just don't like them mixed, especially under the article's name now. I believe the article should be called List of Neo-Latin names of cities.--Simen113 (talk) 14:47, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Non-neolatin names

The list of European cities in Latin (not in neo Latin) is not in the section with "List of Latin name of islands" etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 15:39, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Cincinnati

The form Civitas Cincinattas is puzzling. The natural thing, to me, would be Cincinnatorum. —Tamfang (talk) 22:53, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

This article needs to be merged with another

There is a page called "List of Latin place names in Continental Europe, Ireland and Scandinavia", with which there is overlap in content. That article is much more extensive and also divided by country instead of only by alphabetical order, so it's more useful for reference. It contains both actual names the Romans used as well as Latinised names given during the Middle Ages, so it's not the case that this article contains Neo-Latin while the other one doesn't. The fact that neither article lists the other under the See also section suggests that the authors of the respective articles were not aware of the other article.

I propose that the articles be merged into "List of Latin place names". Or do I fail the reason why these articles are separate? 163.158.202.184 (talk) 21:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)