The question is, what would the map look like if he'd had a really awkward near-unpronouncable name? Would people still have been so eager to name their cities after him? Would he have been ousted by another man whose name was easier to shout?
Actually, he did have an awkward near-unpronounceable name for some people. Alexandretta (of Indiana Jones fame) became Iskanderun due to the Arabs misparsing the "al-" on the front as the definite article; and in Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, "Sikander" is the best his Sogdian wife can manage to render his name. I don't know for certain whether the name of the city "Khojand" in her neck of the woods is a mangling of its original name Alexandria Eschate, or whether any resemblance between the two is accidental.
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-02-24 10:45 pm (UTC)Sure to confuse everybody. Nobody knows where they are then.
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Date: 2010-02-24 11:47 pm (UTC)(There are times when I like my middle name.)
The question is, what would the map look like if he'd had a really awkward near-unpronouncable name? Would people still have been so eager to name their cities after him? Would he have been ousted by another man whose name was easier to shout?
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Date: 2010-10-26 08:42 pm (UTC)