Benjamin Zimmer has an informative post up about why the NBC folks are calling it Torino rather than Turin, given that the latter is an accepted English form and is even somewhat famous among English speakers because of the Shroud of Turin.
The interesting historical claim at the end of Zimmer's post aside, it's always seemed strange to me that we have alternate spellings for places that use the same alphabet -- or rather, it's always seemed strange that such alternate spellings are considered standard. The business about exoticization of the Other and fetishization of authenticity rings true, but it also seems likely that there are similar reasons the names are different to begin with. Or is this just an example of diachronic language change?
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