why did the british change pronunciation of foreign names; ie Peking/Bejing; Rome/Roma; Munchen/Munich; etc?

Question

Peking/Bejing; Rome/Roma; Munich/Munchen; Milan/Milano; etc

Answer 1

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The names change based on the discretion of the language they're addressed in, not because of political ideas. For example, Spanish changes common U.S. state names at times to match their own vocabulary, ie: Nueva York, etc, but never proper names of cities. When a place has a descriptive adjective in it, it's hard to understand if you do not know the language, right? Also, I have a feeling some names just get bastardized because they're hard to pronounce in their original creation. For example, all of Italy, to the modern American, would seem incredibly confusing:

Firenze = Florence

Roma = Rome

Venezia = Venice

Turino = Turin

Napoli = Naples

Sicilia, Cinque Terre, etc

Just depends on the pride of the people and the names they like!

Same to any person with the name Christine or Christina based on their heritage.

Answer 2

Beacuse the English do not speak Chinese, Latin, German or italian...pretty much the same reason that every language changes place names. Some are even more egregious than Enlgish. The French turn London into Londres, which isn't close, and Germany/Deutchland becomes Allemagne , which isn't even close to close!

Quite a few English names/pronunciations actually reflect the way things were pronounced in the past; Ligorno in Italy, is Leghorn in English, which seems far afrield. But in older pronunciation it is "LEG'orn" which is pretty close.

Answer 3

Same reason why the Romans latinized nearly everything they came across, from Confucius (K'ung-fu-tzu) to Jesus (Jesua). Latin names were easier to remember and identify with in the widely Latin-speaking empire and Latin-using countries later. Anglicized names were easier to remember during the British empire for English-speakers and the English writing system. If I'm not mistaken, almost every other major language also pronounces foreign names differently from natives. The Japanese have even developed an entire alphabet set aside for the transcription of foreign words to fit with Japanese sound.

Answer 4

The British did not change the pronunciation of those places only translated it to english. All those are still know in the counrty of orgin by those names and spellings.

Answer 5

I don't know if this was just the british, but is was to make the pronunciation sound more like the name sounds as spoken in the native tounge