A List of Iroquois city names

[Keirador]

I have always had issues with the city-names in Civ (the German list being too short, the Celtic list being too Roman, etc.) but I found the Iroquois list to be so *wrong* as to be almost offensive. The Iroquois cities of St. Regis and Oil Springs??? please. . .
I thought that this preoccupation with city-names was an oddity unique to me, but I have seen several posts complaining about the same thing. To this end, I am supplying a large list of real Iroquois city names, so the more detail-occupied player can rename at will, with historical accuracy. I like to rename captured cities to reflect their new nationality, and I generally have a very large empire, so I have a very large list of names. If people seem to appreciate this, I will try to post a non-Romanized list of Celtic names, although that may be harder.

THE LIST-
Awegen,Canajoharie, Canastigaone, Canienga, Cahunghage, Canowaroghere, Canowdowsa, Chittenango, Canadasaga, Caneadea, Cattaraugus, Chemung, Cheronderoga, Condawhaw, Connewango,Dayoitgao, Deonundagae, Deyodeshot, Deyohnegano, Deyonongdadagana, Dyosyowan,Ganogeh, Gayagaanhe, Gewauga, Goiogouen, Ganadoga, Gadoquat, Gannentaha, Gistwiahna Gaandowanang, Gadaho, Gahoato, Gahayanduk, Ganagweh, Ganawagus, Ganesos, Ganedontwan, Ganos, Ganosgagong, Gaonsagaon, Gaousge, Gaskosada, Gathtsegwarohare, Geneseo, Gistaquat, Gwaugweh, Honeoye, Hostayuntwa, Kawauka,Kanagaro, Kowogoconnughariegugharie(lets see *that* name fit into the display) Neodakheat,Nowadaga, Jennesedage, Joneadih, Kahesarahera, Kanaghsaws, Kannassarago, Kashong, Kaskonchiagon, Kaygen,Onekagoncka Onoalagona, Oquaga, Osquake, Saratoga, Schoharie, Tewanondadon, Tionnontoguen,Oneniote, Owego, Skannayutenate,Oriska, Ossewingo, Ostogeron, Schoherage, Solocka, Tegasoke, Teseroken, Tetosweken, Tkanetota,Onondaga, Onondaghara, Onondahgegahgeh, Onontatacet, Otiahanague, Teionontatases, Tgasunto, Touenho, Tueadasso,Nondas, Oatka, Onnahee, Onoghsadago, Onondarka, Owaiski, Skahasegao, Skoiyase, Sonojowauga, Tekisedaneyout, Tioniongarunte, Tonawanda, Totiakton.

If you manage to get through all that (which im not even sure is possible unless you turn domination victory off) I can procure more. Also, I didn't bother trying to make these names ranked in order of size or importance. That would be a Herculean undertaking, but of the top of my head, some of the more major cites are Oneonta, Skannayutenate, Caughanawaga, Oswego, Saratoga, and Geneseo. I am not sure how the developers came to choose Salamanca as the Iroquois capital, if you are going to choose a European-named city, then it should be Syracuse, NY, which has been the capital of the Iroquois confederacy for centuries. Historically, the main village of the Onondaga tribe has been the political center of the Confederacy because it is the geographic center, but unless someone can find a specific name for this village, it is usually referred to simply as Onondaga. As for the name Iroquois, it is not what that people called themselves. It is a French version of the Algonquin word Iriakaw, meaning "red adder" because of the emnity of the two tribes. A more proper name for this Native American group would be the Hodenosaunee or Haudenasaune, which means "People of the Long House".

Some may call me anal. I prefer "perfectionist".

 

[Keirador]

If there appears to be a desire for this sort of thing, it would be very simple for me to give out long lists of city names for all civs. My big issue with most name-lists is that they're just too short, and adding "New" just doesnt cut it for me. New Berlin? At least make the "new" in the right language!

 

[Tomoyo]

Renaming cities take me out of "the zone" which is essential if I want to play well. In a current game, I am almost up to "Beijing 2", but I didn't even bother to add some cities like Shenzhen or Hangzhou (By the way is Hangchow supposed to be Hangzhou?), and didn't rename Canton to Guangzhou because that would require me to choose a new city name every time I founded a city. (like every other turn)

 

[Drakan]

This is a very nice contribution. Thanks.

The only problem is that in a game it's a pain in the neck to rename every city being so time-consuming. Still, very nice.

 

[Shabbaman]

Keirador, did you already did a search on this? If the google search doesn't turn up anything, you could PM a friendly mod and ask him to do a vB site search (oh, those were the days...). When civ3 was released some years ago there were many complaints about the city names lists, and many new lists were proposed. Before you put too much time in it, it would pay out if you took a look at those lists first.

Nice work btw.

 

[thetrooper]

Keirador!

Could you post your references? I would love to see this in the history forum

 

[T-Money]

Renaming cities take me out of "the zone" which is essential if I want to play well. In a current game, I am almost up to "Beijing 2", but I didn't even bother to add some cities like Shenzhen or Hangzhou (By the way is Hangchow supposed to be Hangzhou?), and didn't rename Canton to Guangzhou because that would require me to choose a new city name every time I founded a city. (like every other turn)

Yes. My brother's gf speaks Mandarin and I asked her this question. She says any Romanized version of a Chinese name ending in "chow" is almost always actually "zhou" or "zao" or "jiao", but English speakers are too lazy to say "Hang-zi-ow", so we just write it as Hangchow.

 

[Uiler]

Yes. My brother's gf speaks Mandarin and I asked her this question. She says any Romanized version of a Chinese name ending in "chow" is almost always actually "zhou" or "zao" or "jiao", but English speakers are too lazy to say "Hang-zi-ow", so we just write it as Hangchow.

"zhou" is one syllable, not two.

 

[Tomoyo]

"zhou" is pronouced with a rolled z at the front, and a long o at the end. I don't see how that gets changed to "chow".

Can't they at least say "tso"? I usually end up asking my parent whether "Kaohsung" is supposed to be "Gaoxiong".

(But what really ticks me off is Canton. It makes it look like the great city of Guangzhou isn't on the list. )

 

[Alone]

Well, yes. This is something that it's been mentioned so many times in forum. Cities list for most of the nation is not that good, least to say.
German and France are in a way funy how many cities were missed, India also. For some as Celts is almost shamefull how good that list can be and it isn't. As Shabaman already notice, there is a lot of sugested list for nations here on site, they are not all perfect needer. Also it should be the job for Atari. They can always hire specialist for history and geography (toponims) just for that occasion.

I use to change the list for most of civs on my old computer back in my homeland, I have no time nor posibilites to do that here and now.

At the end is GOOD that you can do that or simply type the name for the city when you build it, (acording to situation were is on map) but problem is with AI cities ...

 

[Keirador]

Tomoyo- I realize that most gamers find these details too trivial too bother about, this is for the few with an obsession to detail. I actually addressed that in the initial post, and since I usually do not have time to play the game for more than say, half an hour at a time, my "flow" is constantly interrupted anyway.

Drakan- You're welcome, it was no trouble, I'm something of a historical scholar anyway. One of the reasons I play Civ is because it occasionally inspires me to do a little research, which I love. In single-player games, its certainly not a "pain in the neck" to change city names, if you already know the names it takes about a second to type in a new name. I see how it could be troubling and unnecessary in multi-player games, but because of time constraints and a general lack of prowess (I only play on Monarch), I usually don't play them.

Shabbaman- I'm new to the site, and don't know how to go about such searches. It honestly never occured to me that this topic had already been thoroughly addressed, because I kept seeing people ***** about it, which implied that the problem had not been solved. If you were feeling friendly could you help me find these lists?

thetrooper- There's a history forum?!

T-Money, Uiler, and Tomoyo again-any debates over the proper spelling of Asian names is essentially pointless, as they're all translated phonetically from a foreign alphabet, and even the phonetics between the two languages are vastly different. Its such a blurry topic that Asian historian and linguistic societies themselves are constantly changing how best to convey Asian words and names, ie., Mao Tse-tung being changed to Mao Zedong in current history books, the Korean city of Pusan now being called Busan, etc.

Alone- Germany, India, and France's lists, while flawed, are fairly easy to fix. Lists of city names, even the size and importance of these cities, is child's play to obtain in only a few minutes online. The Iroquois are a bit of a different matter, because they had few permanent, year-round settlements, and even the largest villages did not exceed 5,000. Also, as I've said, I was unaware of previously existing lists. Could someone point them out to me?

 

[viper275]

Great job. A previously existing list (of both Civ3 civs and other civs people add) is http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27092&pagenumber=1 I don't think they're too bad. Theirs for the Iroquois was:
Onondaga
Oneida
Teyagon
Ganaraske
Akwesasne
Canienga
Oswegatchie
Caughnawaga
Cattaraugus
Kente
Gandesetaiagon
Tiohero
Niagara Falls
Tonawanda
Owego
Kanagaro
Opolopong
Grand River
Deseroken
Allegany
Salamanca
Tuscarora
Saratoga
Geneseo
Chondote
Tyendinaga
Tueadasso
Buckaloon
Onnontare
Skohare
Catherine's Town
Ganogeh
Oka
Skannayutenate
Oriska
Canajoharie
Oil Springs
Gannentaha
Buffalo Creek
Neodakheat
Cowassalong
Union Springs
Venango
Nowadaga
Chemung
Osquake
Cittenango
Gadoquat
Onnahee
Mingo Town
I think I might get the names fixed for an epic game. As Tomoyo said, it gets **very** annoying to type new ones in (I mean, who wants to build 'Beijing 2' ?)

 

[Tomoyo]

Mao Tse-tung being changed to Mao Zedong

Sorry to nitpick, but it was the other way around. There is an official way to romanize Mandarin, called Han Yu Pin Yin, which is widely used in teaching Chinese now. (Does anyone know if Tang Yu Pin Yin = Japanese Romaji?)

 

[Keirador]

That list still contains the Anglicanized names that pissed people off in the first place! Union Springs, Mingo Town, Catherine's Town, Niagara Falls, Grand River, I thought names like these were what sparked the dissent!
Thanks, though. I still wanted to see it, and I do highly agree with the capital being called Onondaga.

 

[Keirador]

Asian linguistics is not an area of expertise of mine, but history is. In my mother's textbooks, the Communist leader of China was called Mao Tse-tung. In mine, he was called Mao Zedong. I am sure of this. Are you sure Zedong came before Tse-tung? Perhaps my textbook was written by a traditional old-timer. At any rate, the point still stands. The english spelling of Asian names is never *truly* accurate, as there exist sounds and consonant clusters in Asian languages that can not be duplicated in the English tongue. Han Yu Pin Yin is simply the current most agreed upon spelling, it can't really be said to be definitavely more accurate similar spellings.

 

[Tomoyo]

That is because, when your mother was a student, Westerners knew slightly less than squat about Asian lingustics, so we get Mao Tse-tung, but now we use Mao Zedong, which is slightly more accurate.

 

[IbnSina]

If you don't like renaming cities in the middle of your game (neither do I), use the editor. There are lists of city names in there that are very easy to modify, and then you get them all in the order you specify - a permanent solution. It might even be possible to copy and paste from this page to the editor

 

[Keirador]

Tomoyo- thats exactly what I was trying to say, the name originally appearing in the West as Tse-tung, and then being changed to Zedong. You told me it was the other way around. Perhaps we just have a miscommunication problem, it seems like we're basically on the same page.

IbnSina- Its my understanding that if you make play a game you've modded *at all*, then there is no palace screen or aerial views in the game. I quite like building up my palace, so I favor the slightly more arduous method of naming each city when I build it, but its really just personal preference, as I know many players have utterly no use for distractions such as the palace.

 

[Uiler]

That is because, when your mother was a student, Westerners knew slightly less than squat about Asian lingustics, so we get Mao Tse-tung, but now we use Mao Zedong, which is slightly more accurate.

At least Mao Tse-tung was an attempt to pronounce the actual Chinese name. Think of the poor (misnamed) Yangtze River. "Yangtze" is the name of just the *mouth* of the river and yet somehow in the West it has become the name of the entire river. Also note that the romanisation is just the *Beijing* way of speaking Mandarin. I guess that's not that much of a problem though, but it should be noted if people say it is a phonetic representation of the language. Think of it like the "Queen's English" version of Chinese. You can have a lot of differences in regions out of Beijing. Though some regions are closer to the Beijing Mandarin than others eg. Shandong is very close to Beijing Mandarin and the differences are usually only apparent to Shandong people.

 

[thetrooper]

There's a history forum?!

Yup!

Edit1: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=58645

Edit2: Er... Sloppy 1st edit: to get to the top try searching for "History Forum" in the search engine.

I assume and believe that you have thorough knowledge (mind all the city names) about the issue, so I would love to see you post something over there.