Do you write Romanov or Romanoff?

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Slovene motorways sign Graz as "Gradec" and Klagenfurt as "Celovec" (not to mention Trieste as Trst and Villach as Biljak). I've also seen Austrian sources call Ljubljana "Laibach" still - and I don't know of other border areas where the relationsip is sufficiently simbiotic that this would happen without causing a riot! :-)

Yes, (said with shades of Archduke Franz Ferdinand), it's sad when you drive towards Bohemia Czechia in Germany or Austria and the signs say Praha instead of Prag. (I always get a little ejderdansk when driving soutwards through Denmark and seeing signs to Flensburg instead of Flensborg. :-) What will the next step in political correctness be? No more Austria, but only Österreich? (Including in Czechia, where you certainly need some time before you realize that Rakousko is Austria, from the name of the border town Raabs an der Thaya (originally Ratgoz).

BTW I once drove from Klagenfurt to Bled. The landscape looked surprisingly similar on both sides. Slovenia just looked less commercialized and thus more "pure Alpine"! Crossing the border into Italy is actually a greater visual change.

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(* I suspect anti-Polish sentiment runs deep among Romanov fans, because of general Polish-Russian historical animosity, the Spała incident and Franziska Schanzkowska / Franciszką Szankowską.)

This is a bit sweeping! For many Brits of my age group, the opposite is true. we had parents of the world War Two generation, which held the Poles in high regard. We then grew up in the era of Solidarity and Pope John Paul II.

I definitely agree with Ann here, in all respects." Romanov fan "encompasses a lot. I daresay little of it, maybe none , involves admiration for the earliest Romanov Tsars, like Ivan the Terrible, nor even Catherine the Great., and the autocratic excesses of Romanov rule, in many respects even extending through the end of the reign of Alexander III. Opposition to that is not inconsistent, for many of us fans,  with an interest in the Romanov line as a whole ,and fascination , and indeed, affection, for the last Imperial Family, including of course, OTMAA.

Of course, this was said tongue in cheek, and I know it's not true, being fascinated with such apparantly mutually exclusive cultures as German and Polish. But it is indeed food for thought that in the reasons for our admiration for the Poles: their fights against Nazi and Soviet occupation - lies their opposition to the rule of the Romanovs, who were seen throughout the whole 19th century untill 1918 as occupiers.

Through their Scandinavian relations and by living very close to Finland, on old Finnic land and in Finland in the summer, the Romanovs had some sort of relationship with Finland. In Poland they seem to just have been hated then - and ignored today.

This difference is perhaps well illustrated in the contrast between Józef Piłsudski, an anti-Russian enemy of both Tsarists and Soviets and Mannerheim, who was anti-Soviet, not  anti-Russian and certainly not anti-Tsarist. (But then independent Finland's first leader, Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, was an anti-Tsarist conservative nationalist exiled to Siberia, just like Piłsudski.)

It is interesting that while many Finns supported the Tsarist regime before the Russification policies initiated by AIII and in full force under NII, the Poles apparantly just hated the Romanovs from the beginning and longed for a new Napoleon to lead their rebellions. It probably has to do with the greater autonomy enjoyed by Finland vs. Russian Poland.

In the trench of distrust between Poles and Russians lies of course the Grand Duchy of Lithuania buried - perhaps the least understood and researched of all European powers? It started out as pagan Lithuanian, then became more Belarussian and Polish and stayed a remarkable mix of Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic.

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LOL, gotta love Piłsudski: A Polish-Lithuanian who grew up speaking Polish and Belarussian and was a Socialist purely in order to win the masses for the cause of restoring the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and also robbed trains for that cause! And his two daughters were born out of wedlock and one was a pilot in WW2! And BTW the noble Piłsudski family is older than the Romanovs, going back to pagan 13th century Lithuania and originally named after the village of Pilsūdai / Pilsudy.

[Janet Ashton]

BTW I once drove from Klagenfurt to Bled. The landscape looked surprisingly similar on both sides. Slovenia just looked less commercialized and thus more "pure Alpine"!

There are lots of rules in Slovenia about keeping things simple and organic: e.g. no motorboats on Bled, which is about as commercial as it gets. Everything simple, low-key, but supremely well-organised, accessible and clean. Very nice country.

PS Why were you surprised it looks like Austria? :-)

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PS Why were you surprised it looks like Austria? :-)

Pure prejudice: I thought I was going to rundown ex-Yugoslavia and it looked just "like Austria ideally should look". Czechia looks more ex-East Bloc than Slovenia does, of course partially because it's hard to imagine the Alpine or Mediterranean side of the drab and dreary East Block

[Janet Ashton]

PS Why were you surprised it looks like Austria? :-)

Pure prejudice: I thought I was going to rundown ex-Yugoslavia and it looked just "like Austria ideally should look". Czechia looks more ex-East Bloc than Slovenia does, of course partially because it's hard to imagine the Alpine or Mediterranean side of the drab and dreary East Block

Ha ha! I think this gets a lot of people. Actually, the first time I went I was expecting something rather more like Slovakia or Poland were at the time, perhaps - very interesting, but a bit scruffy, very cheap, and only just coming to terms with markets. I was astonished that the first thing which greeted us was a little castle with a cafe in the forecourt and a waiter informally dressed and welcoming people in perfect English.

I like the Czech Republic a lot too. I can't put my finger on how they differ, but they do. Slovenia is more "Scandinavian" in atmosphere, and easier for people who aren't multilingual. You'd struggle in corners of Cz. without German or Czech. Slovenia - no problem at all.

Actually - Cz. is srtangely more "dainty" if you get what I mean, despite some very similar architecture - little hills and towns by rivers and wooden houses. The mountains in Slovenia are more imposing.

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The reverse of this (a snippet you'll probably appreciate, Превед ) is the Germanisation of the Slovene word "gradec", a fortress. This pops up in several Austrian (in the imperial sense as well as national) place names - Graz, obviously, plus Windisch Graetz [Slovenj Gradec], and also, ironically in Koeniggraetz, whose Czech name is Kralove Hradec, but whose German name includes the Slovene form instead - showing how intertwined those languages and cultures always were in Austria.

Oh, yes. Graz in Styria (Štajerski Gradec) was once even known as Deutsch-Graz, as opposed to Windisch-Gra(e)tz. The Northwestern Slavic counterpart is Garz (e.g. Garz auf Rügen), as the lack of methathesis has preserved Proto-Slavic gard (> gardec,  instead of gard > grad > gradec).

Oh my, even Greiz, the capital of the aptly Slavic-named Principality of Reuss Senior Line, is supposedly derived from gradec, with typically Saxon-Thuringian diphtongisation of the original vowel, as in the name Reuss (from Rus) itself.

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I've always thought of the Reuss Principalties as inherently Thuringian, but now I realize they lie east of the Saale and thus have many Slavic / Sorbian placenames, e.g.

Gräßlitz - now Aubach, formerly Greßenitz, a small river once flowing through Greiz, probably from Slavic krasna, red + the suffix -ica.
Irchwitz - perhaps the Germanic first name Erich + Slavic suffix -ica!
Sachswitz - the Germanic tribal name Sachs, Saxon + Slavic suffix -ica!

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In the same vein:

Do you write.....

Belarus or Belorussia....

[Rodney_G.]

After about a half century of using Belorussia, Belarus sounds odd, somehow neither Russian nor East European. In a similar(?) vein Rhodesia echoes in my head after hearing Zimbabwe.

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After about a half century of using Belorussia, Belarus sounds odd, somehow neither Russian nor East European.

Lol, you were better informed than my parents. They still have problems finding this country (usually called Hviterussland / Kviterussland - White Russia in Norwegian) on the map where there only was "Sovjetsambandet* - the Soviet Union", in their school atlases.

* In a similar way the US were referred to as Sambandsstatene, the Linked States, in puristic 1950s Norwegian (instead of Dano-Norwegian De forente stater - the United States), in a linguistic war very reminiscient of the situation regarding the use of Belarusian (official, re-invented norm based on rural dialects), Russian (widespread urban language introduced by occupier) and Trasyanka (mix of both) in Belarus.

In a similar(?) vein Rhodesia echoes in my head after hearing Zimbabwe.

It's fun how perspectives change: I never heard a word about Cecil Rhodes or Rhodesia in Norwegian primary school in the 1990s. Instead we learned a lot about medieval African civilisation, e.g. Great Zimbabwe, which sounded like the eigth wonder of the world!

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Haha, and BTW in Belarusian it's Раманаў, Ramanau!

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Принц Уэльский (Prints Uelskiy - current Russian usage) or принц Валлийский (prints Valliyskiy - dated Russian usage) with regard to the title "Prince of Wales".

Personally I'd prefer князь камбрийский (knyaz kambriyskiy).