Why does English have city/country names that differ from the local language?

For example:

• Italy = Italia
• Florence = Firenze
• Rome = Roma
• Venice = Venezia
• Munich = München

Different reasons for different cities? Anglicised for pronunciation? The name changed and English didn't follow suit?

Solution 1:

The section on Anglicised place names in wikipedia states that many have been taken directly from the French name, which itself may come from Latin or a corrupted form of the local name.

There is an interesting example that confirms your idea that some names may have been 'stuck' in English while the local version has changed:

Sometimes a place name can appear anglicised, but is not, such as when the form being used in English is an older name that has now been changed. For example, Turin in the Piedmont province of Italy was named Turin in the original Piedmontese language, but is now officially known as Torino in Italian.

The English/French name for Florence in Italy is closer to the original name in Latin (Florentia) than is the modern Italian name (Firenze).

Solution 2:

This is not an English phenomenon. The French, for example, call London "Londres" and Dover "Douvres".

The technical name for this is exonym (wiki).

Solution 3:

Fortunately enough there is not a single reason to all these idiosyncrasies. Among all the examples you have cited, I'll just pick up Munich.

The German for Munich is "München". The origin of both Munich and München names is the same older spelling Munichen. In one case, the final "en" disappeared, in the other, the intermediate "i" disappeared.

The origin of the old name Münichen is that the city was founded next to a Benedictine monks settlement (see also West-minster for instance) - in present day German, "Mönchen" means "monks".

The English name "Munich" has no particular signification but in Italian, they have translated it to Monaco (Monaco di Baviera) because the Italian for monk is precisely "monaco". It is also the folk-etymology for the Monaco situated on the French Riviera because the current Grimaldi dynasty took over the citadel in the 13th century disguised as monks (or so the legend says).

This is actually quite confusing if you live in Italy and you don't know this peculiarity: if you want to spend a week end watching bikinis and decide to take a return ticket to Monaco at your favourite travel agency, there is a possibility that you actually end up contemplating Lederhosen.

A picture is probably better than a thousand words.

Solution 4:

Generally the English name is the closest pronunciation - which given the English's historic skill with foreign languages can be a bit off.

Sometimes the modern spelling comes from a particular historical usage and since in English, at least until printing caught on, spelling was a bit chaotic - this can be anything.

It also sometimes gets political. Bombay->Mumbai, Peking->Beijing, could be argued that it's none of India or China's business to decide how words are pronounced in English