What's in a Name?
Postal History Sunday #209
All right everyone! Set those troubles aside, pour yourself a favorite beverage and allow yourself a snack. Put on the fuzzy slippers and settle into your comfy chair.
It’s time for Postal History Sunday.
I’m going to start by introducing you to Iowa, the state in the US where I was born and reside. We have towns here named Madrid, Tripoli and Norway.
And I can tell if you from Iowa (or are close to someone with deep connections there) if you pronounce each and every one of them correctly. And no, I’m not telling you how you’re supposed to say them because we Iowans use your errors as a way of identifying your non-Iowaness!
On the other hand, postal services are more concerned with spellings rather than the verbal sounds used to identify a place. Madrid, Iowa and Madrid, Spain look the same to a postal clerk! It doesn’t matter that the residents of each location will vocalize those names differently. But, this brings us to the erroneous assumption that every place is known by exactly one name that is always spelled one way.
And that’s why I am going to share the first cover for this week’s article… Take a moment and look carefully at the place names.
I am wondering. Have you heard of the town named “Filadelfia?”
No, really. It’s addressed to Filadelfia, Stati Uniti d’America.
How about the country named “Inglitterra?”
The docket at the top left reads “via d’Inglitterra.” These sorts of the instructions are typically there to indicate the route an item should be taking to get to the final destination (Filadelfia). So, that is probably what this is doing too.
If you haven’t figured it out yet - and I am guessing most of you have. The first is a reference to the eighth largest metropolitan area in the United States during the present day. It’s the location of the Liberty Bell. If a baseball fan doesn’t root for the Phillies while visiting, they might need to be fully aware of their surroundings at all times (so says the guy who wears a Cincinnati Reds hat everywhere he goes).
Filadelfia, Etati Uniti d’America is known in the United States as Philadelphia - of course.
The second example (Inglitterra) is home to London. Inglitterra is “England” to the English-speakers in the world.
The sender of this letter lived in Tuscany (Italy) and Inglit is the Italian word for English and terra translates to “land.”
Inglitterra = English Land = England.
Now it all makes perfect sense to the guy who lives in Iowa and has never been forced to really learn a second language his entire life. *
* To be perfectly clear, I did take my required language classes in high school and college. But that’s not the same as having to actually communicate in another language beyond what is required for test taking.
This next cover was also featured in last week’s Postal History Sunday. This particular item was bound for that London town in England… er… Inglitterra. Except, it doesn’t say that.
Here’s where I show a little evidence that I did learn a little of that French I took in college. I can at least recognize the French equivalent for England - “Angleterre.”
But this feels like it’s all getting very confusing. Why can’t everyone just agree that England is England and Philadelphia is Philadelphia? At least they seem to be sticking with L O N D O N for London.
You all just had to know I was setting myself up to do something just like this. Here is a cover that is addressed to the city of “Londres.” That’s L O N D R E S for all of you who are keeping score at home. Londres happens to be the French spelling for London.
So, let’s summarize this before we go any further. This letter was sent to the Frederick Huth Company in London, England from Bergamo, Italy in 1871. There is a business marking in blue at the lower left with the name Steiner - which has a high probability of having German origins (Bavaria, I think?). So we have someone with probable German heritage sending a business letter from Italy that is using the French words for an address in England.
Got it? Good!
Why am I making a big deal of this?
First and foremost, I think everyone would agree with me when I say that it makes sense that a letter writer would use their own language for the address of a letter they intend to send. If I wanted to send a letter to London, England, I would write “London, England.” I would not choose to scribble out “Londres, Angleterre” or “Londra, Inglitterra.”
Similarly, I would not expect someone in France or Italy to write “London, England.” Nor should I necessarily expect that their representation of my town or city is going to match mine. My “Philadelphia” is their “Filadelfia.” It’s still the same place.
All of this leads us to an amazing thing. Postal services around the world have worked with this knowledge for a very long time. Not only could a letter to a given location have different spellings of the name of that location due to language - they could also be mispelled.
Or… just badly written.
In the 1850s, 60s and 70s, countries exchanged mails with each other by following negotiated postal agreements (treaties). These treaties typically identified special post offices in each country that would serve as exchange offices. It was there that the clerks would be more well versed in the different spelling permutations for various geographical locations. I am sure there might have been times that the postmasters in various small post offices across the globe were very glad to just recognize the letter was going to someplace in Italy and know that the responsibility for routing it that way was going to be someone else’s thing.
So, where is this letter coming from and where is it going? The postmarks on the postage stamp reads “Wien” and the address says it is going to “Florenz.”
If you know some European geography, both of these are prominent cities. I would know them as Vienna, Austria, and Florence, Italy.
People in Vienna would refer to their city as “Wien,” but it seems the Italians might prefer “Wienna.” The people of Mantova spell their city with an “ova” at the end and people in the US might be tempted to call it “Mantua.”
Postal workers of the time often had tools, such as maps and lists of post offices so they could do their best to match the written address with the probably location. For example, here is a publication listing of the Canadian post offices for 1860 that was available at that time. And here is a list of post offices written in Cyrrilic. Since I don’t understand that language, I can’t be sure what the list is for exactly. And here is one for the United States in 1866.
Bringing it home
Our final item was mailed in Splugen (Switzerland) in 1865 and has a Swiss 10 centime/rappen stamp applied on it to pay the postage. Splugen is both a settlement and a mountain pass in the Alps near the Swiss/Italian border. The hard part was trying to figure out the destination. The address panel on the front maybe reads "Clafau" or "Clafen," but I couldn't be sure.
The reverse shows a receiver postmark for Chiavenna, which is located just South of the border, which clearly makes it a piece of border mail. After some searching, it turns out Chiavenna is also known as Claven, Kleven and Clavenna depending on the language. Is it possible that the address was written as “Claven” with a big “V” or maybe “Clafen” which was still good enough to get to the right place?
I don’t know for certain. But, somehow, the postal clerks in Switzerland and Italy figured it out.
Housekeeping
I hope you all enjoyed receiving a couple of extra Postal History Sunday articles this past week. Both were older efforts that I took the time to edit and format so they look good in Substack. I offer them to you as part of my celebration of four years of Postal History Sunday.
I do not expect to offer additional articles frequently, but it seems like a nice way to quietly acknowledge a milestone.
Also, some of you might notice that today’s effort is a bit more disjointed, is maybe a little less “meaty,” and maybe has more typos than normal. Let’s just say that we have had an interesting couple of weeks at the Genuine Faux Farm. The time I had for editing did not exist without forsaking sleep. I suspect I will return to update the web version of this article with fixes in the not too distant future.
After I remedy the sleep issue.
Still, I had fun sharing with you the different names every place has - even if they don’t know they have them! I hope you enjoyed it too.
Thank you for joining me today. Have a fine remainder of your day and an excellent week to come.
Postal History Sunday is featured weekly on this Substack publication. If you take this link, you can view every edition of Postal History Sunday, starting with the most recent publication. If you think you might enjoy my writing on other topics, I can also be found at the Genuine Faux Farm substack. And, some publications may also be found under my profile at Medium, if you have interest.