I just saw this article in that thread and something in the Guardian one box caught my eye. (You’ll have to click through, the one box doesn’t make it into the quote)
I wondered, does “campi flegrei” not have an exonym in English? In German it does: die Phlegräischen Felder. I have since looked it up and in English it’s the Phlegraean Fields.
This got me thinking about exonyms for places in the classical Mediterranean world. They’re a way that we in more northerly Europe have incorporated the classical world into our own origin stories. If a small area outside Naples/Neapel (not Napoli!) has a German/English name, it’s a part of our heritage as much as it is for the people who live there!
It’s also interesting that the Guardian doesn’t use the English exonym. Do their journalists not know it, is it a conscious decision (maybe based on their style guide; I haven’t checked) to use local names over the imposed ones, or do they position themselves as outside the Oxbridge educated elite that would be conversant in these geographic designations of the Grand Tour?
