Evolution of City Names and Languages

[Foxforch]

Firaxis seems to have gotten better at making cities appear in the language for the civs as well as proper voice actors for their leaders. I hope they make it even better in Civ7. They were terrible at it in Civ5, even got capitals wrong for the respective leaders. For instance, Warsaw wasn't capital under Casimir III's reign and the actor wasn't even a native speaker, so there were errors in his speech. In Civ6 they correctly made Kraków the capital under Jadwiga and you can tell the actor was a native speaker. They even bothered to add the ó in Kraków. However, the city of Warszawa is still Warsaw in Civ6. Is it to not ostracise the English audience? I imagine a lot of culture and history lovers playing the 4X game about historical civilizations you give a new chance to stand the test of time. I don't see a reason to not make all the cities appear in the country's language (if possible) and for actors to be from those areas for that extra authenticity feeling, only keeping the letters latinized for the English versions.

Arabia and Egypt in Civ6 has same city on their list twice by different names which is rather awkward. Damascus and Halab, Shedet and Arsinoe. The Byzantines even has a freaking mountain as a city! How can they mess that up?

It'll be interesting to see what Firaxis is gonna do with Civ7. If Sweden is added to the game, I'm pretty sure they're gonna mess it up and have the leader speak in modern Swedish again.

 

[reddishrecue]

It's good to know that there were errors in the making. Makes me think to not really rely on civilization as a trusted source of information about civilization except for maybe the civilopedia.

 

[Quintillus]

You have high standards, and opinions that may not be universal. Not saying there isn't room for improvement, but preferences may vary, and it's probably impossible to make everyone happy all the time. To take a city that has appeared in several iterations in one form or another - Venice. In Italian it's Venezia, but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm so excited for my vacation to Venezia this fall!". Everyone knows "Venice" in the Anglosphere, I'd guesstimate 2% would recognize Venezia. Probably higher among the Civ-playing audience (and again among the CivFanatics audience), but there is an element of recognizeability at place with using Anglicized forms in the English-language name list.

Maybe it's made an option what degree of "foreignization" the player wants, but that adds complexity that could be spent improving the game elsewhere. Sure, it would be great if you could say, "give me the native versions, or give me my native Venise or Venedig", but at some point you're also going to run into "I want Polish cities in my native French and Italian cities can stay in Italian" and at that point you might as well let people write their own mod that gives them the place names they are happy with, because you can't anticipate every combination.

 

[TempusFugit]

Regarding a civ having the capital that is the one that would be correct for its assigned leader, I don’t necessarily agree with that. The way I see it, it is more important that a civ represents a civilization/culture/nation over time, rather than at a specific time. For the same reason I hope they one day go back to leaders or diplomats changing with the time period, as in Civ 3. But I can also understand your point of view here. Having the civ capital and leader be from the same time seems a little more tidy.

Otherwise I generally agree that more historical correctness is a good thing. Getting the speech right, or what some think is right for people who doesn’t exist anymore, is a little more tricky. And expensive. To be frank I am still impressed and quite content with what they pulled off in recent games. So many games and movies force you to listen to English with a silly accent and pretend that it is French, Russian or some other language. That they even tried to recreate the sound of some ancient languages is quite impressive in my book. But if they put in even more effort on this, I’m definitely not going to complain about it.

Regarding using native or English names for cities, I have mixed feelings about that. I do like the English names for a lot of cities, but on the other hand it feels more authentic, especially when playing that civilization, to use their own names. I haven’t given much thought about this subject, so perhaps you are right. But it could also be that using only native names for all civs and city-states would mean that a lot players wouldn’t recognize certain cities.

 

[TempusFugit]

Venice. In Italian it's Venezia, but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm so excited for my vacation to Venezia this fall!". Everyone knows "Venice" in the Anglosphere, I'd guesstimate 2% would recognize Venezia..

You are mostly right, but I think there is a difference between Europeans and those from the Anglosphere here. Or at least some Europeans. In Norway it is called “Venezia” and a lot of other place names are closer to the native ones than in English as well. But not for all places. I assume it is quite similar in Swedish, which is the language of the poster. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other big languages like French and Spanish has their own takes on more names, similar to in English, but when I last looked at the subject, it seemed like English was an outlier among European languages. But it would be interesting with a thorough analysis of the subject.

 

[Quintillus]

As for evolution of this in Civ... let me share some of the Civ3 localizations.

For China, Firaxis largely used the Wade-Giles system of Romanization (see city list below). This created an interesting contrast of Chairman Mao as the leader of China, using a Romanization system that Mao's government had discontinued in 1958, and whose Hanyu Pinyin mainland successor had been largely adopted internationally in the 1980s, but which was still in use to some extent in Taiwan while Civ III was being developed. An attempt to make both sides happy that likely made neither happy? Or just using old reference books for city names?

Beijing
Shanghai
Canton
Nanking
Tsingtao
Xinjian
Chengdu
Hangchow
Tientsin
Tatung
Macao
Anyang
Shantung
Chinan
Kaifeng
Ningpo
Paoting
Yangchow

Somewhat similar with India. Bombay officially became Mumbai in 1995, but was still Bombay in Civ III, and probably recognized by a larger percentage of the English-speaking (and perhaps international as a whole) audience by that name. Similar de-Anglicizing of names was occurring around this time in many other cities in India, but Firaxis stuck with what was still well-known abroad. This would still be the case with Civ IV; for V and VI, Mumbai would replace Bombay, but Calcutta would still be on the list, not switching over to Kolkata, its official name since 2001. Why the discrepancy between Mumbai and Calcutta? I don't know, it would be interesting if there were some sort of research paper on recognizability that was influencing the decision.

Delhi
Bombay
Madras
Bangalore
Calcutta
Lahore
Karachi
Kolhapur
Jaipur
Hyderabad
Bengal
Chittagong
Punjab
Dacca
Indus
Ganges
Pune

I could also point out a few "non-local" variants in European city lists, like Cologne instead of Köln (although if we really want to go local, perhaps it should be Kölle?). But the point is that there has been evolution on this over the iterations. And sometimes native did win out even in Civ3; Neapolis was chosen for the Roman list rather than the Italian Napoli or the English Naples.

They also took a few intentional liberties. Why was "Hunt Valley", a largely unknown city, in the American city list? Because it's where the Firaxis headquarters was! Do you remember where Apolyton, Greece is? It is at apolyton.com. Is Thunderfall north or south of Narvik? Neither, he's the founder of CivFanatics.com. Historical purists would be aghast at such decisions, but they both went over my head at the time, and they were probably appreciated references by members of the two largest Civ fansites at the time.

 

[Quintillus]

You are mostly right, but I think there is a difference between Europeans and those from the Anglosphere here. Or at least some Europeans. In Norway it is called “Venezia” and a lot of other place names are closer to the native ones than in English as well. But not for all places. I assume it is quite similar in Swedish, which is the language of the poster. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other big languages like French and Spanish has their own takes on more names, similar to in English, but when I last looked at the subject, it seemed like English was an outlier among European languages. But it would be interesting with a thorough analysis of the subject.

English may well be the outlier, although it probably depends on historical quirks of contact and trade relations and local preferences as well. How the Italian city of Livorno became "Leghorn" in English I don't understand, and I hope it isn't Leghorn in any other languages.

I'm guessing from the list of supporting languages on Steam that there isn't any official support for Norwegian in Civ VI? That's another place that regional preferences could gain some traction. It's interesting to look at the supported languages by version:

Civ III: English (I believe there were also translated boxed variants in various markets, but have never found an authoritative list)
Civ IV: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Civ V: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese (Traditional)
Civ VI: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese

So Firaxis has been gradually adding more native language support per-version, not just in the city lists, but for the game as a whole. I doubt we'll see any Scandinavian languages added to the list given the high quality of English-language instruction there, but wouldn't be surprised if we see one or two additions. Arabic? Hindi? Turkish? Lao? It likely depends on where Firaxis expects it has the best chance of growing its audience.

 

[Foxforch]

Regarding a civ having the capital that is the one that would be correct for its assigned leader, I don’t necessarily agree with that. The way I see it, it is more important that a civ represents a civilization/culture/nation over time, rather than at a specific time. For the same reason I hope they one day go back to leaders or diplomats changing with the time period, as in Civ 3. But I can also understand your point of view here. Having the civ capital and leader be from the same time seems a little more tidy.

Otherwise I generally agree that more historical correctness is a good thing. Getting the speech right, or what some think is right for people who doesn’t exist anymore, is a little more tricky. And expensive. To be frank I am still impressed and quite content with what they pulled off in recent games. So many games and movies force you to listen to English with a silly accent and pretend that it is French, Russian or some other language. That they even tried to recreate the sound of some ancient languages is quite impressive in my book. But if they put in even more effort on this, I’m definitely not going to complain about it.

Regarding using native or English names for cities, I have mixed feelings about that. I do like the English names for a lot of cities, but on the other hand it feels more authentic, especially when playing that civilization, to use their own names. I haven’t given much thought about this subject, so perhaps you are right. But it could also be that using only native names for all civs and city-states would mean that a lot players wouldn’t recognize certain cities.

If the general concern is about recognition, then how about we theorize that these "new" names makes English-speaking audience more curious to know more or even see a similarity and goes like "huh, so that's what it's called in their language, cool." Historical correctness what I think is good cuz it can educate players while they're snorting the game. It certainly got me more curious through the decade and looked around, to realize how poor much of it was in Civ5, but improved in Civ6 but still flip-flopped on which language the names would be in, so it even (by accident?) got same cities show up by other names on the same list, such as Arabia and Egypt.

 

[pokiehl]

I would prefer city names to remain recognizable, so I don't really see a problem with Warsaw as opposed to Warszawa. I want to see "Rome" as well, not "Roma."

I do think consistency within city lists could be improved. The city list for Egypt is a great example; many of the cities have the native Ancient Egyptian names but there are also plenty of Hellenistic names. Context matters, and in the case of Egypt, with Cleopatra leading, it would have made more sense to me to have the Hellenistic names.

The Scythian city list was just bizarre, though. It was quite strange to me to have a civ that represents Eastern Scythians (the Massagetae) but have modern names of settlements in the Caucasus. I get that there aren't a ton of great choices here, but some better options would have been to use names of rivers in the region or at least current settlements in Massagatae territory.

 

[Foxforch]

You have high standards, and opinions that may not be universal. Not saying there isn't room for improvement, but preferences may vary, and it's probably impossible to make everyone happy all the time. To take a city that has appeared in several iterations in one form or another - Venice. In Italian it's Venezia, but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm so excited for my vacation to Venezia this fall!". Everyone knows "Venice" in the Anglosphere, I'd guesstimate 2% would recognize Venezia. Probably higher among the Civ-playing audience (and again among the CivFanatics audience), but there is an element of recognizeability at place with using Anglicized forms in the English-language name list.

Maybe it's made an option what degree of "foreignization" the player wants, but that adds complexity that could be spent improving the game elsewhere. Sure, it would be great if you could say, "give me the native versions, or give me my native Venise or Venedig", but at some point you're also going to run into "I want Polish cities in my native French and Italian cities can stay in Italian" and at that point you might as well let people write their own mod that gives them the place names they are happy with, because you can't anticipate every combination.

Venice would be Venesia in Venetian, and I'm rather confident many would recognize it as such. The earliest thing that bugged the hell out of me was the Danish in Civ5 and their capital of "Copenhagen" instead of København and "Gothenburg" instead of Göteborg, and for the remainder of this post I have to go Italics cuz it's bugged. Anyway, I still fail to see how native names would flush the entire thing into a neverending spiral. They finally went with Göteborg in Civ6 which is a big plus, and I didn't see anyone tear down someone's shelf in confusion over it. But the voice actor omg, fricking 2019 Stockholm Swedish with a few old words that didn't fit in at all with how modern it sounded and made it cringy.

Vietnam was good, a native voice actor, only slight issue being that she called her civ Việt Nam instead of Âu Lạc. However, instead of Hà Nội or maybe even simply Hanoi (that would definitely be the case with Civ5) the capital is actually Thăng Long, an older name for it, though to be even more correct, the city would be Âu Lạc as well for her time. Firaxis is not too far though, they're halfway I'd say.

 

[Foxforch]

I would prefer city names to remain recognizable, so I don't really see a problem with Warsaw as opposed to Warszawa. I want to see "Rome" as well, not "Roma."

I do think consistency within city lists could be improved. The city list for Egypt is a great example; many of the cities have the native Ancient Egyptian names but there are also plenty of Hellenistic names. Context matters, and in the case of Egypt, with Cleopatra leading, it would have made more sense to me to have the Hellenistic names.

The Scythian city list was just bizarre, though. It was quite strange to me to have a civ that represents Eastern Scythians (the Massagetae) but have modern names of settlements in the Caucasus. I get that there aren't a ton of great choices here, but some better options would have been to use names of rivers in the region or at least current settlements in Massagatae territory.

Indeed. Egypt's city list makes more sense when they added Ramses in the leader pool, but I'm sure a lot of us could do so much better with it. I did once manage to make a list of 30 "cities" for the Scythians that didn't get weird, if you check Ukrainian articles and translate them, they got a lot more info about burial mounds, forts and areas the Scythians had an established presence in that isn't seen in the English articles. It's rewarding to research, but it also pains me when I see what they missed.

 

[Naeshar]

I am in favor of having localized names like Kraków. I understand most of the players have english client (both native speakers and not locally represented like myself) and it needs to be the most acceptable around. How about a menu option of all cities localized or translated to client language? I guess the French and Spanish and Chinese clients already have some cities in translated anyway and fully anglicized city names could be an option. I would welcome that for some asian names.

As for Venice, I was confused when I encountered the name online at first. Never thought Benátky would be spelt that way.

 

[Foxforch]

As for evolution of this in Civ... let me share some of the Civ3 localizations.

For China, Firaxis largely used the Wade-Giles system of Romanization (see city list below). This created an interesting contrast of Chairman Mao as the leader of China, using a Romanization system that Mao's government had discontinued in 1958, and whose Hanyu Pinyin mainland successor had been largely adopted internationally in the 1980s, but which was still in use to some extent in Taiwan while Civ III was being developed. An attempt to make both sides happy that likely made neither happy? Or just using old reference books for city names?



Somewhat similar with India. Bombay officially became Mumbai in 1995, but was still Bombay in Civ III, and probably recognized by a larger percentage of the English-speaking (and perhaps international as a whole) audience by that name. Similar de-Anglicizing of names was occurring around this time in many other cities in India, but Firaxis stuck with what was still well-known abroad. This would still be the case with Civ IV; for V and VI, Mumbai would replace Bombay, but Calcutta would still be on the list, not switching over to Kolkata, its official name since 2001. Why the discrepancy between Mumbai and Calcutta? I don't know, it would be interesting if there were some sort of research paper on recognizability that was influencing the decision.



I could also point out a few "non-local" variants in European city lists, like Cologne instead of Köln (although if we really want to go local, perhaps it should be Kölle?). But the point is that there has been evolution on this over the iterations. And sometimes native did win out even in Civ3; Neapolis was chosen for the Roman list rather than the Italian Napoli or the English Naples.

They also took a few intentional liberties. Why was "Hunt Valley", a largely unknown city, in the American city list? Because it's where the Firaxis headquarters was! Do you remember where Apolyton, Greece is? It is at apolyton.com. Is Thunderfall north or south of Narvik? Neither, he's the founder of CivFanatics.com. Historical purists would be aghast at such decisions, but they both went over my head at the time, and they were probably appreciated references by members of the two largest Civ fansites at the time.

It's rather simple. You play as the Germans, you build Köln, or are we naming it Cologne in favor of the English in the game? If I conquer it as Victoria, sure I could rename that thing to a perfume. Yes, I get it that names change overtime and they did just that in Civ5 with Mumbai but kept Calcutta, and still does it in Civ6 cuz that's what they're going with now, cuz calcutta taxi taxi. Yes, the intentional liberties Firaxis has is rather funny, it also went over my head before, but it's a great way to come down and be with the civ fans. Who wouldn't wanna sneak in their own village in a city list of a respective civ yeah?

 

[Foxforch]

I am in favor of having localized names like Kraków. I understand most of the players have english client (both native speakers and not locally represented like myself) and it needs to be the most acceptable around. How about a menu option of all cities localized or translated to client language? I guess the French and Spanish and Chinese clients already have some cities in translated anyway and fully anglicized city names could be an option. I would welcome that for some asian names.

As for Venice, I was confused when I encountered the name online at first. Never thought Benátky would be spelt that way.

I really like your idea to have an option if you want the anglicized names or not. We Scandinavians always has the English client and we Swedes in particular say names of other countries' cities localized or in German. Such as München, Edinburgh (not "bruh"), Marseille (exactly like the french), Venedig, Ostrava, Brno, Prag etc etc. This cultural conflict when we so such different names it's a great way to learn and appreciate as we learn history, wanting to know more while snorting the games. A win win.

 

[pokiehl]

Ultimately, while there are some improvements to be had in city lists, I think it's hard to find consensus as this thread shows.

Honestly I overall don't think any of it is a big deal. We'll probably be able to rename cities in the game itself. And basic text modding is extremely simple, so it's really little work to customize city lists how you want. In fact, my dissatisfaction with the Scythian city list is precisely what launched my modding career

 

[Gori the Grey]

Should city names appear in the script of the culture in question, also? 北京

 

[Foxforch]

Ultimately, while there are some improvements to be had in city lists, I think it's hard to find consensus as this thread shows.

Honestly I overall don't think any of it is a big deal. We'll probably be able to rename cities in the game itself. And basic text modding is extremely simple, so it's really little work to customize city lists how you want. In fact, my dissatisfaction with the Scythian city list is precisely what launched my modding career

Of course, I didn't expect get a following or any of that, just creating a discussion! But as per usual, anywhere I go, I always seem to attract an admin or moderator to shut it down with long arguments and no pitch, making it more difficult to get it running. I too learnt to enter the data files to change the names, done countless city lists of civs, even for mod civs because even modders can miss something.

 

[AffineConstant]

It's good to know that there were errors in the making. Makes me think to not really rely on civilization as a trusted source of information about civilization except for maybe the civilopedia.

It's just a game, and games are hard to make as it is. I do appreciate the effort when they put it in though.

 

[dagriggstar]

My ideal is actually names that evolve with the game based on what’s happening.

The Australians founded a new city - Dootigala - named for the geography of the area. A district is built and it becomes Batmania, after a local politician. The Australian government changes and the name changes to Melbourne. Finally, whenever Australia enters a golden age it changes to Narrm.

Something like that. Probably mid territory though.

 

[Solver]

Do you remember where Apolyton, Greece is? It is at apolyton.com.

Please, it's always been apolyton.net