Why 'Torino'?

[JQK]

English and French are the offical languages of the Olympics.

To comment on that...

French was always the sole official language of the Olympics. It wasn't until the past few years that English became the second co-official language.

Wrong.

English and French have always been the offical languages of the Olympic Movement.

So I guess one of the commentators for the Olympics made a bit of a mistake

it's been known to happen. Especially with NBC.

[DEAD!]

Well, "Torino 2006" isn't too hard to grasp. After some explanation, I think the general public can understand Torino is Turin. But it would have been something else had the 2004 games only been in greek letters....

I think the individual games organising commitee does have a say in what to call their city as long as the IOC and it's advertisers are happy with it in the end.

[VitaminD]

Well, "Torino 2006" isn't too hard to grasp. After some explanation, I think the general public can understand Torino is Turin. But it would have been something else had the 2004 games only been in greek letters....

I think the individual games organising commitee does have a say in what to call their city as long as the IOC and it's advertisers are happy with it in the end.

But the Athens Olympic Games Committee calls their host city "Athinai" in their native language. And they call their country "Ellas" (Ελλας) or "Elliniki Dhimokratia" (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία) amongst themselves. The Greeks could use the Greek alphabet, we could use the Roman alphabet, the Russians could use Cyrillic (Афины... they call the city "Ah-FEE-nee", and they don't have a "th" sound to use anyway), and so on.

I don't care if it's one way or the other, but the IOC is applying this "use the native language" philosophy indiscrimantely. Personally, I think they should use the native pronunciation of the host city, and we can tailor that to our alphabets appropriately. The 1980 Summer Olympics would have been (correctly) held in Moskva, and like Athens/Athinai 2004, I don't think anyone would've been supremely confused where the Games were being held.

[winghaz]

This whole thing brings up something I've never really understood about the English language. That is, why are there specific English words for nations or cities when there aren't for personal names?

For example, it's called Norway in English-speaking countries and Norge in Norway, but the Olympic athlete is Ole Einar Bjorndalen in both.

Or it's called Italy in English-speaking countries and Italia in Italy, but the famous skier is Alberto Tomba in both.

We say Germany instead of Deutschland. Munich instead of Muenchen. Sweden instead of Sveirge. Etc., etc. It's something I really don't understand about the English language.

[VitaminD]

Most of our names for foreign cities/nations are historic. Often, they're based on colonists mishearing native names for the places they colonized (Captain Cook badly botched the names of what are now the Hawai'ian Islands). Or, they're out-and-out mistakes (why Native Americans are "Indians"). Or, we inherited them from other languages/cultures (the Republic of Georgia is known as Sak?art?velo by its citizens; Georgia came to us through Arabs and Persians who named the area "Land of the Wolves" [Gorjestan]. Whatever the reason, these names have been inculcated into our language and collective culture over centuries. Rarely do countries make an effort to change their name; the most recent one was Burma becoming Myanmar - but most people still call it Burma.

Individuals, on the other hand, generally can use their name, and languages adjust as needed. However, many Scandinavian and Slavic athletes have diacritical marks taken off their names when they compete in English-speaking nations; some even suffer mispronuncitaions as a result (Jiri Slegr should be "YEER-zhee", not "YEE-ree"). And Russians have all sorts of changes when switching out of Cyrillic and into English. (There've been a couple of "standard transliterations" over the years, but they've changed over time.) Hardest of all is transliterating Chinese and Korean names into English - again, there are standard transliteration, but they're subject to change.

Moreover, it's not just English. The French call London "Londres" and Brussels "Bruxelles". Depending on what language you speak, a male native of "Deutschland" is a German (English), allemand (French), tedesco (Italian), немец (nemyets, Russian), tysk (Swedish), vācietis (Latvian) or saksa (Finnish). We haven't been a worldwide society for very long, and so everyone calls everyone else what we've always called them.

[T-man3]

Its always you say in your languge not how the host says it for exaple the Olimpics in Roma I bet you called it the Rome Olimpics