Problems with city names in Realism Invictus

[Nikas Kunitz]

Instead of writing huge post with feedback on various things in the mod, I decided to discuss this smaller thing at first.
Recently I decided to play RI a bit, first time in some years (I more often examined the mod than played it in recent years), only to find out that the problem with some civs' city names still is not fixed! Back in the day, six years ago or so, I spent a lot of time personally modmodding RI, including dynamic city names. What hadn't changed since then is that dynamic city names still are quite messy, which also ties up to civs/leaders list and what they are trying to represent. However, what really popped up the problem for me is that some well-known and important civs' city names still lack essential diacritics. In my opinion, there's no point in having dynamic city names if while playing as Germany I'll found Koln instead of Köln, or Goteborg instead of Göteborg while playing as Scandinavia, and other cities like that. It seems it's not such a huge issue for other players, but for me it really breaks immersion annoyingly. What is even more bedazzling is that there are some civs that have proper city names with diacritics, like Hungary, making their lack in other cities even more intolerable for me!
So, I made some much needed fixes in DynamicCityNaming file. Despite great temptation, I decided not to add new entries in the city lists (with one small exception for one leader I'll note below), I just fixed some city names. Regarding diacritics, encoding that Civ4 uses allows to properly render diacritic letters of major Western European languages, so fixing city names of such civs like Germany, Scandinavia and France was the first aim, meanwhile Polish city names with its diacritic letters, as it is well-known, cannot be properly rendered in Civ4, so Polish city list remained untouched. Other than adding diacritics, I also changed some city names to more native spelling, especially if other names in the list already had native, not-English, spelling.
My changes affected civs' founding city lists and city name variety list, and I kept it all cohesive.

Spoiler List of changed civs' cities :

Germany (and Austria). As you might see, this was the first one. I just added diacritics to names that lacked it, including German varieties of other civs' cities. I also added German variant for some French and Italian cities present in German HRE city lists (Marseille->Massilien, Arles->Arelat, Pavia->Pawei).
Scandinavia (that, for most part, is just Sweden). Just added diacritics in many cities that lacked it (Scandinavia has more names with diacritics than other civs). Christian IV uses Danish names and diacritics, including the capital (Copenhagen->København). His city list is pretty different from others dominated by Sweden, so only one shared city has difference (Malmo changed to Malmö/Malmø). While Ragnar has his own traditional Viking civ city list. Also, in the font that RI uses difference between ø and o is barely noticeable.
France. Someone unfamiliar with the French language might think that there's no much difference regarding French diacritics, but e, é and è are pretty much separate letters representing different phonemes. Even more important is ç that represents s instead of c. However, existing French city lists don't have as many names with diacritics as they could, so there are just some, but very important, fixes, like Orleans->Orléans and Besancon -> Besançon.
Spain. There's only one diacritic letter that is needed to use, ñ, because á é í ó ú just represent stress, not different phonemes, and they became mandatory (in official spelling) only in XIX century. But Spanish city lists surprised me in other way. The first and most important city with ñ is La Coruña, but for some reason it used Portuguese spelling (La Corunha), which is possible alternative to Spanish orthography to represent the Galician name, but then it should had A instead of La. In general, Spanish city list is a bit messy as it likely was assembled by checking modern official names without enough expertise. As such, it has some notable Catalan city names instead of much more widely used, both historically and nowadays, standard (Castilian) Spanish names. This is a bit wrong considering Spain represents (including its leaders) historical Castilian-led/dominated Spain, while Catalan and other names became widely officially used only in XX century. This is particularly crazy with city list of Franco using Catalan names, considering he is well known for his Castilisation policies aimed at full assimilation and prohibited official use of Catalan or other minority languages (that is the main reason why official use of local names became so widespread after his rule). So, Catalan Lleida and Elx were changed to standard Castilian Spanish Lerida and Elche.
Turkey/Ottoman. This is another civ with language where diacritics are crucial. Modern Turkish alphabet is notably impossible to be rendered fully with Civ4 encoding, so I have designed optimal system to render Turkish consonants with standard Latin letters, particularly for historical names, but I hadn't used it considering it would require basically rewriting city list from scratch. Instead, I just added much needed ö, ü and â. Turkish city lists have surprisingly small amount of cities with these diacritics. Most notable change is Bilge's capital Otuken that changed to Ötüken, along with few others, like Kudüs (Jerusalem), Üsküp (Skopje) and Selânik (Thessaloniki). Also, for some reason, instead of Bursa the name of its province, Hudavendigar, is used. I kept that and changed it to properly spelled Hüdavendigâr. I might had missed some lesser known names, but they just keep their existing RI spelling and renaming if so.
Arabia. Here I added proper Arabic names for some cities that used English names (like Aleppo, especially strange considering Turkish uses Arabic-like name Haleb), despite using Arabic names for others (like Dimashq for Damascus). So, Aleppo is now Halab and Jerusalem is Al-Quds in Arabic city list. Moreover, there were no variety entries for Mecca and Medina, despite their significance and presence in both Arabia and Turkey city lists, potentially leading to presence of both Mecca and Mekke on the same map. So, I added variety entries of Mecca and Medina with Makkah and Madinah being Arabic variants. Also, as the only addition to a city list, I added Bakkah and Yathrib to Bilquis city list as pre-Islamic names of Mecca and Medina.
Egypt. This one a bit tricky. Ancient and Ptolemaic names kept untouched. Arab Egypt (Baybars, Muhammed Ali and Nasser leaders) can either use standard Arabic forms, or use local, non-standard pronunciation, like Cairo is either Al-Qahirah (fixed misspelling Quahirah - it is not Latin qua, it is different hard k sound) or El-Qahera, and Alexandria can be either Al-Iskandariyya or Eskendereyya. I chose standard Arabic. Also, Damietta is Dumyat and Rosetta is Rashid, but I kept Luxor as is.
Persia. Minor changes, changed Cyrus' and Darius' name of Pasargadae and Ecbatana to Pathragada and Hangmatana and adjusted ancient names of Isfahan. Persian city lists are such a mix of Old and New Persian, Greek and Latin names that properly fixing it would need total rewriting.
Greece. Generally, done de-Angicisation and de-Latinisation of many city names, especially Ancient Greek, changing them to proper uniform Greek forms. Adjusted city names to reflect Classical or Modern Greek, like Athens is Athenai or Athina, Thebes became Thebai or Thiva (while Egyptian Thebes is Diospolis).
Rome. Changed few important cities from English to Latin form, like Antioch to Antiochia, Carthage to Carthago, and, most importantly, Rome to Roma (I'm tired manually renaming the capital each time I want to play as Rome!).
Russia. Changed Moscow and St. Petersburg to their Russian forms, Moskva and Sankt-Peterburg, adding other civ name variants as well. Also, adjusted some names, including obvious misspellings like Vyzama to Vyazma.
Changes to Greek and Persian city names also pulled changes to minor changes in Transoxiana city names.

I tried to keep naming coherent and as I tested it seems to work fine.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

So, I made some much needed fixes in DynamicCityNaming file. Despite great temptation, I decided not to add new entries in the city lists (with one small exception for one leader I'll note below), I just fixed some city names. Regarding diacritics, encoding that Civ4 uses allows to properly render diacritic letters of major Western European languages, so fixing city names of such civs like Germany, Scandinavia and France was the first aim, meanwhile Polish city names with its diacritic letters, as it is well-known, cannot be properly rendered in Civ4, so Polish city list remained untouched. Other than adding diacritics, I also changed some city names to more native spelling, especially if other names in the list already had native, not-English, spelling.

Oof. I wish you'd check out the SVN version first... I added diacritics and umlauts to at least Scandinavian, Polish and German lists literally a week or so ago. Still, thanks for your effort and I'll try integrating it (there were quite a few other changes that'd prevent me from using your file outright at this stage, unfortunately. Also, you seem to have attached the wrong file.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

Oof. I wish you'd check out the SVN version first... I added diacritics and umlauts to at least Scandinavian, Polish and German lists literally a week or so ago. Still, thanks for your effort and I'll try integrating it (there were quite a few other changes that'd prevent me from using your file outright at this stage, unfortunately. Also, you seem to have attached the wrong file.

Damn, I really misclicked with the file. The forum works rocky for me today, loading only in "time windows" so I rushed when it finally loaded. I'll reuploaded it.
I'm glad you finally got to fix that! You can check and compare my file of course, and I'll be glad if you will integrate my changes. Would Polish cities just get ó as other characters aren't renderable with Civ4 encoding?
As it is a weird interest of mine, I can even make extensive "optimal" city lists for some civs, especially considering existing lists might be too short in some cases. Was it a deliberate choice to keep them all between around 20-30 cities? I think lists of around 50 cities could be optimal if a civ expands a lot.
Also, I rushed so fast that I forgot to ask what I wanted. Is there a standalone version of dynamic city name mod used in RI? Maybe I overlooked it, but I could only find Xyth's mod, that is more complex and doesn't work for me (History Rewritten itself uses a different version of it). I like simple leader-based structure of dynamic city names in RI and I would like to build my own "optimal" lists using it, for my mod or just post it as a mod component for others.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

Forum really hates me today. Can't upload the file :/

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Would Polish cities just get ó as other characters aren't renderable with Civ4 encoding?

Yes, it's just ó's. I'd love to have some ł's and others but as you mention yourself they can't be properly shown in regular Civ 4 (maybe a local Polish version used a custom gamefonts file but it wouldn't be much help).

As it is a weird interest of mine, I can even make extensive "optimal" city lists for some civs, especially considering existing lists might be too short in some cases. Was it a deliberate choice to keep them all between around 20-30 cities? I think lists of around 50 cities could be optimal if a civ expands a lot.

As I needed lists for ALL leaders, I decided to have a set standard I'd adhere to. Obviously for some, like Americans with their regular censuses it'd be very easy to just go overboard, but I feel the 33 names every leader currently gets is quite enough for all regular cases. I don't really endorse absolutely gigantic maps where founding more might be a realistic case; even on the largest map size a civ can be expected to have no more than 50ish cities, with at least half of those having been captured from other civs. In practice, I haven't seen any single case of a civ running out of names.

What I feel would be more helpful, and what one can never have enough of, is civ-specific renames for the cities that are already there.

Also, I rushed so fast that I forgot to ask what I wanted. Is there a standalone version of dynamic city name mod used in RI?

This component was written specifically for RI from scratch many years ago and to my knowledge was never released as standalone.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

As I needed lists for ALL leaders, I decided to have a set standard I'd adhere to. Obviously for some, like Americans with their regular censuses it'd be very easy to just go overboard, but I feel the 33 names every leader currently gets is quite enough for all regular cases. I don't really endorse absolutely gigantic maps where founding more might be a realistic case; even on the largest map size a civ can be expected to have no more than 50ish cities, with at least half of those having been captured from other civs. In practice, I haven't seen any single case of a civ running out of names.

Well, huge city lists in my view are not only for a civ to never run out of custom city names, but also for more randomness and representation, giving opportunity to see every notable city of a country that a civ represents. Not all cities in every game, but different cities in every game. This is also connects to my concept of city list structure that is somewhat different from the one used in RI. In RI it is more like a hierarchical sequence, with limited alternatives on each level. The thing is, more levels of randomisation hierarchy there are, lesser the probability of seeing cities that are closer to the bottom. In my view, there should be the capital, 2-5 cities of absolute importance, and then huge pool of all the other cities to ensure that all of them have atleast some chance of appearing in game. Both the structure and number of cities depends on a civ, but it's possible to create the "ultimate optimal" list fully representing a country.

This component was written specifically for RI from scratch many years ago and to my knowledge was never released as standalone.

This is why I want it, to create such optimal city lists that my and other mods also could use. Sadly, AbsintheRed, the creator of RI dynamic city names seems to have gone from the forum years ago. Is it possible to detach this component from the mod? I suppose it doesn't have anything in the .dll, only .py files? Like, what lines in what files should be added to make it work standalone?

What I feel would be more helpful, and what one can never have enough of, is civ-specific renames for the cities that are already there.

Yeah, I totally can see some potential for that. Atleast many famous capitals can have more variants, For example, in my fix file I added some additional names for Moscow that were missing, including French Moscou, Spanish Moscu and Hungarian Moszkva. I also added Rim as the Russian form of Rome (Polish Rzym already is there). That's just a small glimpse of what is possible, though how huge and messy the existing file is scares me from trying to add as much variants as possible, as I tried to do some years ago.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

This is why I want it, to create such optimal city lists that my and other mods also could use. Sadly, AbsintheRed, the creator of RI dynamic city names seems to have gone from the forum years ago. Is it possible to detach this component from the mod? I suppose it doesn't have anything in the .dll, only .py files? Like, what lines in what files should be added to make it work standalone?

I wouldn't know. I am frankly afraid of touching that code in any major way. It does what it's supposed to through some dark magic, and I'm satisfied with it.

Yeah, I totally can see some potential for that. Atleast many famous capitals can have more variants, For example, in my fix file I added some additional names for Moscow that were missing, including French Moscou, Spanish Moscu and Hungarian Moszkva. I also added Rim as the Russian form of Rome (Polish Rzym already is there). That's just a small glimpse of what is possible, though how huge and messy the existing file is scares me from trying to add as much variants as possible, as I tried to do some years ago.

Exactly!

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

Still can't upload...
Downloading 3.8 anyway. Will improve dynamic city naming file anew, using 3.8, maybe will try to reupload the new one later. As I understand, you only added diacritics to German, Scandinavian and Polish city names, but not made other changes?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I made lots of other changes, some quite major, such as giving post-Classical Roman leaders Italian city name varieties.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

I reapplied my changes on the new version. Thankfully, almost all of German and Scandinavian city lists are identical between my changes and the new version, which was expected. Polish city list is now a bit incohesive - it use ó for some cities, but not for all where it is needed. Furthermore, I stumbled upon on two instances of ń and ż being used, that obviously should not be used in Civ4.
Expanding modern Italian city names for Mussolini and Borgia are nice, but good half of them feel a bit pointless - they are just original local name reinstated to avoid using Latin ones, even in some cases of cities having actual Italian exonym, like Göteborg instead of Gotemburgo. In my opinion, it makes having dynamic city names somewhat pointless in that instance. Some cities can just use Latin names, standard for Rome civ, if they agree with Italian orthography. For many others... there are a lot of historical Italian exonyms, like Bordella for Bordeaux, even if they aren't widely used nowadays with few exceptions, like still used Marsiglia for Marseille. I replaced some reused original names with Italian exonyms, though not all.

But as I was playtesting a scenario and working on dynamic city names, I noticed some additional issues.
Russian city list of Alexis has city of Pereyaslavl among the top priority ones. I'm very sure it should be Yaroslavl instead, that is absent altogether.
There are three important cities named Pereyaslavl: the oldest one is in Ukraine, on the Dnieper south of Kiev, it was capital of a major principality during Kievan Rus, but unlike most other princely seats that kept their significance in following centuries to present day, Pereyaslavl, now known as Pereyaslav, pretty much lost significant importance after it was sacked by the Tatars. The only important post-Mongol invasion event, that actually was during Alexis' reign, tied with this town, was the council of Pereyaslav in 1654, that pledged allegiance of Cossack Hetmanate to Tsardom of Russia instead of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The second one is Pereyaslavl of Vladimir-Suzdal principality, in the very heart of Russia, known as Pereslavl-Zalessky. It was one of the important regional cities/towns, but it's importance generally diminished by XVIII century. Finally, there is Pereyaslavl of Ryazan principality, known simply as Ryazan, the name "overtaken" from original Ryazan that was sacked by the Tatars. Which of these three Pereysavls is the one in Alexis' city list? Judging that it use VARIETY_CUMANIA entry, it is the first one, the least important one, even if it hosted the council (Kiev itself is absent from Alexis' list).
Meanwhile, Yaroslavl is present in city lists of every Russian leader, except Alexis. Despite the fact that XVII century was pinacle of importance of Yaroslavl, as it became the second largest city of Russia after ultimate diminishment of Novgorod and Pskov during the Time of Troubles, in the late part of which Yaroslavl actually served as provisional capital of people's militia before liberation of Moscow. After being second in importance to Moscow only in XVII century, in XVIII and following centuries importance of Yaroslavl "declined" to being only the main regional city on the Upper Volga, what is rightfully reflected by its presence in city lists of all other Russian leaders.
Finally, Ryazan. It has its own variety entry, but is not present in city lists of any Russian or other leader, effectively making it non-foundable ingame. Despite the fact that Ryazan was and is one of main cities of Russia for centuries, the main city in Oka river region before the rise of Tula. Even if officially named as Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky before Catherine II, the city was usually called Ryazan pretty much from the time when the original Ryazan was sacked. So, Ryazan should be present in city lists of every Russian leader, having top priority in lists of earliest leaders, Ivan III (during his reign, Ryazan remained a separate principality, but was a pretty much integrated vassal to Moscow, before being fully absorbed shortly after Ivan III was succeeded by Basil II) and Alexis, with diminishing priority for every later leader, similarly to Yaroslavl and other old Central Russian cities.

The point of writing all this jazz was to point that, even without making "superhyper 100 city lists" I described above, even current format city lists still have a lot of issues regarding representation of important cities during rule of selected leaders. Not only concerning Russia, but other civs as well, like Isabella has top priority for Salamanca, and that's fine, but lower priority for cities like Valencia (that is described as second largest in Spain during XV-early XVI centuries), Barcelona and Granada (could be nice to highlight victorious end of Reconquista during her reign, and capital of one of constituent kingdoms of Spain). Or Elizabeth having too low priority for York, even though it was in top 5 largest cities along with Norwich and Bristol, while being the political center for northern half of England; just as few examples.

Finally, I strongly suggest that the first city, the capital, of Japan for Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi should be Kyoto, not Edo. Kyoto remained not only the imperial capital, but also the center of administration for reunified Japan, while Edo remained only an important regional center before Tokugawa moved administrative capital here. This aso will make much more balanced selection of capitals among Japanese leaders, as currently only Minamoto founds Kyoto (as Heian-kyo), -- there will be three leaders with Heian-kyo/Kyoto (Minamoto, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi) and three with Edo/Tokyo (Tokugawa, Mutsuhito and Hirohito).

My other issue, that is especially noticeable while playing on real World map, is many city lists representing whole empires, not prioritising their core regions represented by particular civ. The best example is Rome, most leaders of which have lists dominated by cities from all Mediterranean, like Alexandria, Antioch or Carthage, sideling Italian cities like Mediolanum, Neapolis, Ravenna, Aquileia or even Syracusae. Another good example is Timur, that has top priority cities from all across Middle East, while sidelining Central Asian ones. I understand that this is intentional, but still would open a discussion, perhaps should key core cities of a civ take priority over larger cities of its empire outside the core?

All in all, I will continue improving city lists, and will post the result later...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I reapplied my changes on the new version. Thankfully, almost all of German and Scandinavian city lists are identical between my changes and the new version, which was expected. Polish city list is now a bit incohesive - it use ó for some cities, but not for all where it is needed. Furthermore, I stumbled upon on two instances of ń and ż being used, that obviously should not be used in Civ4.

Looking forward to getting it.

Expanding modern Italian city names for Mussolini and Borgia are nice, but good half of them feel a bit pointless - they are just original local name reinstated to avoid using Latin ones, even in some cases of cities having actual Italian exonym, like Göteborg instead of Gotemburgo. In my opinion, it makes having dynamic city names somewhat pointless in that instance.

That's exactly the point, reinstating the original name to override the civ-level old Latin naming. That's how I basically make the two exempt from the Roman city list. Whether they need Italian exonyms for remote places or just default names is simply added fluff and not as important as not using the Roman civ name list.

Russian city list of Alexis has city of Pereyaslavl among the top priority ones. I'm very sure it should be Yaroslavl instead, that is absent altogether.

It's modern Pereslavl-Zalessky, which, while diminished in importance in post-Mongol times, seems to have still remained pretty important at least up to the time of Peter the Great (though maybe meriting a bit lower weight). I do agree that I missed Yaroslavl on that list; good catch.

Finally, Ryazan. It has its own variety entry, but is not present in city lists of any Russian or other leader, effectively making it non-foundable ingame. Despite the fact that Ryazan was and is one of main cities of Russia for centuries, the main city in Oka river region before the rise of Tula. Even if officially named as Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky before Catherine II, the city was usually called Ryazan pretty much from the time when the original Ryazan was sacked. So, Ryazan should be present in city lists of every Russian leader, having top priority in lists of earliest leaders, Ivan III (during his reign, Ryazan remained a separate principality, but was a pretty much integrated vassal to Moscow, before being fully absorbed shortly after Ivan III was succeeded by Basil II) and Alexis, with diminishing priority for every later leader, similarly to Yaroslavl and other old Central Russian cities.

The thing about Ryazan is that, while old Ryazan seems to indeed have been one of the more important Russian cities, Mongols seemingly were very thorough at razing that region, and it never quite recovered since. The census of 1897 reports the population of Ryazan at 46k - 1.5x times lower than even Pereslavl-Zalessky, which, as you note yourself, isn't really among the most important cities, and that seems to be after a significant growth period in the XIX century; around 1800 the population seems to have been a measly 10k. But if I were making a list for a pre-Mongol leader, Ryazan would definitely be on it.

Finally, I strongly suggest that the first city, the capital, of Japan for Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi should be Kyoto, not Edo. Kyoto remained not only the imperial capital, but also the center of administration for reunified Japan, while Edo remained only an important regional center before Tokugawa moved administrative capital here. This aso will make much more balanced selection of capitals among Japanese leaders, as currently only Minamoto founds Kyoto (as Heian-kyo), -- there will be three leaders with Heian-kyo/Kyoto (Minamoto, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi) and three with Edo/Tokyo (Tokugawa, Mutsuhito and Hirohito).

Agreed, I seem to have been lazy and probably just used the same list for the three.

My other issue, that is especially noticeable while playing on real World map, is many city lists representing whole empires, not prioritising their core regions represented by particular civ. The best example is Rome, most leaders of which have lists dominated by cities from all Mediterranean, like Alexandria, Antioch or Carthage, sideling Italian cities like Mediolanum, Neapolis, Ravenna, Aquileia or even Syracusae. Another good example is Timur, that has top priority cities from all across Middle East, while sidelining Central Asian ones. I understand that this is intentional, but still would open a discussion, perhaps should key core cities of a civ take priority over larger cities of its empire outside the core?

Yep, intentional as you point out. And yes, I know that especially with Roman emperors this can look a bit jarring, but I am trying to have consistent standards here. "Core" cities are already actually given more priority - Roman lists are built so that every other city is from the Italian peninsula, whereas if it came to population/overall economic importance, far fewer cities in Italy proper would have made it on those lists.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

The thing about Ryazan is that, while old Ryazan seems to indeed have been one of the more important Russian cities, Mongols seemingly were very thorough at razing that region, and it never quite recovered since. The census of 1897 reports the population of Ryazan at 46k - 1.5x times lower than even Pereslavl-Zalessky, which, as you note yourself, isn't really among the most important cities, and that seems to be after a significant growth period in the XIX century; around 1800 the population seems to have been a measly 10k. But if I were making a list for a pre-Mongol leader, Ryazan would definitely be on it.

To address this before everything else. I've spent some time reasearching historical population of Russian cities for making optimal city lists, and also to memorise it for general historical knowledge. And as also I just checked it, according to 1897 census, population of Pereslavl was just more than 10.000 (that is pretty decent for a not governorate center), while Ryazan indeed was 46.000, which is pretty solid for a governorate capital (only some really high population cities, like Tula or Kazan, had higher population). I don't know where you got information about Pereslavl having 1.5x higher population than Ryazan, and that just sounds really strange, considering that governorate capitals almost always were the most populous cities, with few notable exceptions, usually new industrial or trading centers, like Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir governorate, or Nezhin in Chernigov governorate (and still, these governorate capitals had decent population in addition to their administrative role). Ryazan, while not being among most populous cities of the empire, still had solid population and significance. In mid XIX century it had population of more than 20.000 people, while Pereslavl only 5000, and at the start of the XIX century Ryazan had around 8000 people, while Pereslavl 2000-3000. So, Ryazan witnessed decent growth and development in XIX century as a provincial center, even if not as high as some industrial cities. It was very similar to neighbouring Tambov. And city population of 10k is not "measly" for early XIX century - only some governorate seats had such high population, and by all means it qualifies as city at the time (not a best example of course, but USA had only around ten 10k cities at the time, but they and their number quickly grew in following decades due to industrialisation).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Oh yeah, sorry about that, I had Yaroslavl and Pereslav-Zalessky open in two neighbouring tabs, and the population figure was from Yaroslavl. In general, as of the 1897 census, Ryazan isn't even in the top-50 cities in the Russian Empire by population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_of_the_Russian_Empire_in_1897. Generally, I'd agree with you that a growth from 8k to 46k is above average for Russia in the XIX century, if we extrapolate from total population estimate of 35M at the beginning of the century to 126M in the 1897 census (though at the same time, a linear extrapolation might not be the best approach, as I'm sure the share of city vs countryside population has also increased in the meantime), which means that even with that above-average growth landing Ryazan with a very modest - by Russian measures - population in 1897, it must have relatively even less significant at the beginning of the century. And yes, USA is indeed not the best comparator for the early XIX century as it only had ~5M in total.