Unutterably Silly Quiz

[Kumabjorn]

Thank you for that.
I guess my early entry is what put me ahead, I have a feeling my fellow competitors knew those anwsers as well.

Anyway, we're off with a little geographical knowledge. Below you find a list of cities. What were they known as before these names?

1. New York City
2. Tokyo
3. Oslo
4. Seoul
5. Bratislava
6. Karl-Marx Stadt
7. Harare
8. Istanbul
9. Kinshasa
10. Kitchener
11. Nizhny Novgorod
12. Volgograd
13. Kyoto
14. Ho Chi Minh City
15. Jakarta

[Billi]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

6. Karl-Marx Stadt

Then I grab the "German point". Karl-Marx-Stadt has formerly been and is now again Chemnitz.

[Stitchawl]

1. New Amsterdam
2. Edo
8. Contantinople (sp?)
13. Heian-kyō
14. Saigon
15. Batavia

Stitchawl

[SneakySnake]

awwwwww too late again stitchy got the ones that I know.. and a couple more.

Harare used to have a very English sounding name????

[Kumabjorn]

Billi 1
Stitchawl 6, trust him to take the Asian examples.

SneakySnake is on the right track. Think steak.

[Bookpossum]

12. Stalingrad?

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

12. Stalingrad?

Yes, bonus if you can give its name before Stalingrad.

[issybird]

3. Christiania
9. Salisbury?
10. Berlin
11. Gorky
12. Tsaritsyn

[Kumabjorn]

1. New York City Stitchcawl: New Amsterdam
2. Tokyo Stitchcawl: Edo
3. Oslo Issybird: Christiania, spelled Kristiania in Norwegian
4. Seoul
5. Bratislava
6. Karl-Marx Stadt Billi: Chemnitz
7. Harare poohbear_nc: Salisbury
8. Istanbul Stitchcawl: Constantinopel spelling acceptable
9. Kinshasa poohbear_nc: Leopoldville
10. Kitchener Issybird: Berlin
11. Nizhny Novgorod Issybird: Gorky
12. Volgograd Bookpossum: Stalingrad, bonus for Issybird for knowing Tsaritsyn
13. Kyoto Stitchcawl: Heiankyo
14. Ho Chi Minh City Stitchcawl: Saigon
15. Jakarta Stitchcawl: Batavia

Stitchcawl 6 points
Issybird 4 points
poohbear_nc 2 points
Bookpossum 1 point
Billi 1 point

[poohbear_nc]

9. Leopoldville

[poohbear_nc]

7. Salisbury

[reading about exploration for the source of the Nile can pay off!]

[Kumabjorn]

Poohbear_nc knows his African cities, two points.
Stitchcawl leads but Issybird can still reach six points.

[Fbone]

4. Gyeongseong (although I think it had several names earlier)
5. Pressburg (early records suggest it was Istropolis by ancient Greeks)

[Kumabjorn]

Point for Fbone, Pressburg is correct for Bratislava. Istropolis is in essence a "foreign" name, as is Gyeongseong. This is the Korean reading of the characters for Keijo the name given the city by the Japanese occupants. The traditional name for Seoul in Korean is Hanyang, if you encounter a Korean from Seoul and say; "Ohh Hanyang" their breasts swell with pride, the same goes for Tokyoites, ask them if they are an Edokko (at least three generations in Tokyo).
Perhaps Stitchcawl, the winner of this section, can tell us something about Kyotoites and Heiankyo.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Perhaps Stitchcawl, the winner of this section, can tell us something about Kyotoites and Heiankyo.

The anthropologists of the world are still waiting for Japan to permit excavation of all the Keyhole shaped burial mounds found throughout Osaka and Kyoto, but know that this will never be permitted as it would prove that Japan was first inhabited by Koreans and not by Japanese originating from Amataratsuomikami.

Kyoto is the only city in Japan that was designed based on the principles of Feng Shui, the Chinese study of earth energy. In the 25 years that I've been here, I have not met a single Japanese person who is aware that the "T'ai Chi," (that round black and white Yin/Yang symbol) has anything to do with religious thought, or is Chinese in origin and NOT Japanese. Only two people I've met were aware that their city was designed by Chinese astrologers, and both of them happened to be second generation Chinese Japanese.


Stitchawl