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Originally posted by Sodak
I was in Aachen not too long ago. It's in Germany, just east of Maastricht, in the Netherlands. The Aachenaars called it Aachen, signs identified it as Aachen. Is there a historical Aachen (a.k.a. Aix-la-C) on the Frech side of the Benelux?
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Julien wrote:
Aachen is the German name and Aix-la-Chapelle the French one. The original latin name was Acquis Grana, and Dutch call it Aken. It's common for cities in the region to have quite different names in each language. There is only one Aachen.
For example, neighbouring Liege in Belgium is called Luettich in German, Luik in Dutch, Liejas in Spanish (from the Spanish Netherlands time, eventough Liege was never part of it), Liegi in Italian and "Lietch" in Walloon (dialect of French spoken there). It is worse for other cities like Lille in France, that is called Rijsel in Dutch or Mons (French-speaking Belgium) that becomes Bergen in Dutch. This is because of the meaning of the original name. Lille (l'ile) means "the isle" or island, which translate ijsel in Dutch. The "r" comes from old Dutch "der", meaning "the" ; so "der ijsel" (Rijsel). Same for Mons (mount) which translate Berg(en) in Dutch and German.
Tough when you look at the pannel on the highway and you're not from the region. Especially since Flanders (Northern, Dutch-speaking Belgium) has decided to show only the names in Dutch, even for Walloon, French or German cities, going as far as to remove the dubbing on the pannel in a stroke of "national" pride (they are asking their independance from Belgium).
That's for the little story of my region.
It's pretty much the same all over Europe. For some reason in texts I've usually seen the old Frankish capital refered to like this: "Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle)". If all cities in Europe were refered to this way, books would be much thicker with pages of lists of variations on a city's name.
The Slovak capital is called Bratislava, but the Hungarians call it Pozsony, the Austrians call it Pressburg.... Old medieval Klausenburg in Transylvania was for a long time the Hungarian Kolozsvar, and is now the Romanian Cluj Napoca. My family came from Polish Wilno, now the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Ya can't go anywhere in Europe without overlapping cultures and histories.
I was in Aachen not too long ago. It's in Germany, just east of Maastricht, in the Netherlands. The Aachenaars called it Aachen, signs identified it as Aachen. Is there a historical Aachen (a.k.a. Aix-la-C) on the Frech side of the Benelux?
Small detail, that's all. 
