German place names in Google Maps- weird

Just googling those names, they seem to come up quite often and seem to be in rather common usage. Ratisbon is the old Celtic name for Regensburg, Brunswick for Braunschweig, and it looks like many businesses use Mayence in their names for Mainz. It is rather interesting. I like old maps and and the Main river is often spelled Meyn. Frankfurt is Franckfort, Franconofort, Franckfurt, and so on. Seems it took a while for Germany to decide how they wanted to spell. A lot of Germany in this area was also French for quite a while and those different spellings also crept into common usage. Then Germany went and changed it all again about 20 years ago, with their Rechtschreibung.

I didn't look if it was checked, but mine does too.

The German word for "wax" is Wachs. Also "Fox" is Fuchs.

And if they're going for archaic English usage, they missed the boat with Aachen. Mark Twain reported that he would have stopped in Aachen if he had known it was the same place as Aix-la-Chapelle, which is the name he had learned for Charlemagne's capital.

"Seems it took a while for Germany to decide how they wanted to spell." Same thing in this country. Georaphical name spelling was not standardized for our first 100+ years. It wasn't until 1890 that President Benjamin Harrison established U.S. Board on Geographic Names. One of the Boards first decisions was that names ending in "burgh" had to be changed to "burg", so for the next 21 years, the city in Pennsylvania was Pittsburg. At a special meeting of the Board on July 19, 1911, that decision was reversed and Pittsburg was restored to Pittsburgh. I believe Pittsburgh, PA, is the only city in the US allowed to use that ending. People who collect antique glass, much of which was made in Pittsburgh, can date it by the spelling of the town. I read a German story that was written around WWII, in which the author refers to the 24 letters of the alphabet. I know 'X' is not native to the alphabet and I assume 'Y' is the other letter* (Lugwig changed the spelling of Baiern to Bayern because he thought it look better). "Mayence" must be the French spelling. * Despite that story, I have seen 26 letter Sütterlin alphabets from an earlier time, although the authors admit that they are "modernized".

RE: The letter X in Germany. Although I admit it isn't commonly used, I know of at least two place names in Germany that use it: Xanten and Gorxheimertal.

Jo: My version of Google Earth (not Google Map) displays both names (Mayence & Mainz), but only if the Populated Places box is checked (under Labels); if it's not checked, you only get Mayence. Odd.

True, Xanten is the only town that begins with "x" in Germany, went there as a day trip from Düsseldorf in Aug. 1989.....interesting, since it was battleground in WW II.

Aix-la-Chapelle is the French name for Aachen, just as Moselle is the French name for Mosel. There was a topic on "Jeopardy!" recently that gave 3 tributaries and asked for the river. One of the questions included "Moselle" and it threw off the respondent - he thought the river was the Seine, but it was the Rhine (or Rhein). It pays to know your place names - all of them!

I'm from Mainz. I'm German and grew up there. I've been noticing the odd usage of "Mayence" on Google and tried to research the last time this name was used in English, that's how I came across your site. I have NEVER seen my city referred to as anything other than Mainz in German, and for that matter in English (other than Google). "Mayence" is entirely French, certainly today. It's not even pronounced like Mainz. Historic spellings (pre-1900) include "Maintz" or "Mayntz", which ARE pronounced alike. The City of Mainz official homepage calls the city "Mainz" in both the German and English versions (but "Mayence" in the French version). http://www.mainz.de/WGAPublisher/online/html/default/hpkr-5nkek8.de.html The only time Mainz was called Mayence IN Mainz was during the various times of French occupation! To respond to one of the posters, we never WERE French, we were OCCUPIED by the French. Calling Mainz Mayence in English for THAT reason is a bit like calling Krakow Krakau because that's the German name, and hey it was "part of Germany" for a while... To be sure, I'm all for using well-established place names if tradition and current usage suggest it. That would be the case with "Munich" or "Cologne" or "Rome", but "Mayence" is just too odd. If a few private stores in Mainz use "Mayence" in their names, they're just trying to sound fancy. For some reason or other, they think they'll sell more stuff if they sound French. Same story as in the US, really. It has nothing to do with what the city is called by people. Btw, Ratisbon for Regensburg is equally outlandish to me. And Brunswick sounds pretty 19th century.