Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Swedish exonyms

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Below is list of Swedish language exonyms for places in non-Swedish-speaking areas of the world.

Contents

Older Swedish forms, which are not commonly used nowadays, are in brackets ().

In general

Diacritical marks (such as ´ ` ^ etc above letters) are generally stripped, except that Å, Ä, Ö, are kept, and usually also Ü and É (but È and Á are written E and A). Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese Æ and Ø are often written as AE or Ä and Ö, especially in the press.

Foreign place names containing a direction such as South or Upper are often translated, e.g.:

  • East Timor - Östtimor
  • Northern Ireland - Nordirland
  • South Africa - Sydafrika
  • but U.S. states nowadays keep their English names in Sweden:

  • e.g. South Carolina and West Virginia
  • Denmark

    Newspapers in Sweden usually write all æ as ä or ae and all ø as ö, because of the lack of æ and ø on the Windows keyboard layout for Swedish, and historically because of the lack of them on Swedish typewriters. Swedish newspapers often write aa as å, even though both forms of the same sound exist in Danish.

    Swedish Wikipedia write Danish place names using the original æ and ø, except for those listed above.

    Estonia

    Estonia had a significant indigenous Swedish-speaking population until the mid-20th Century, so many of these names are not really exonyms in the strict sense of the word.

    Norway

    The mutually intelligible Norwegian and Swedish languages have different spelling systems for the same letters, which means that Norwegian letters æ and ø often are modified in a Swedish context. The Norwegian spelling is possible in some circumstances.

    Russia

    Some of these names are not really exonyms in the strict sense of the word, as the places have been part of Sweden, some founded as such.

    United Kingdom

    Some areas beginning with British are translated, such as the British Virgin Islands into "Brittiska Jungfruöarna". (British Columbia in Canada nowadays kept)

    References

    Swedish exonyms Wikipedia


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