A Brill Calendar: April 1

Don't Be Fooled

Only a few city-names change, even if translated in a foreign language.

Often the change is tiny: more often than not, English writers use ‘Leyden’, where the Dutch prefer ‘Leiden’; Dutchmen refer to ‘Londen’, although knowing well that natives say ‘London’. Similar shifts often reflect close cultural ties throughout the ages with the geographical object mentioned; ‘Paris’ becomes ‘Parijs’, ‘Köln’ ‘Keulen’ and ‘Thames’ ‘Theems’.

It is an amusing phenomenon: Amsterdam invariably stays Amsterdam, Madrid, Madrid. Duration and age has something to do with it: Antwerpen, Amsterdam’s stepmother, looses two letters in English.

Since the Middle Ages, Dutch geographical names were often adapted by its Anglo-Saxon neighbour. Occasionally these name changes could be drastic, with scant consideration to the ‘exemplar’. Vlaanderen became Flanders, Duinkerken, Dunkirk; Breukelen, Brooklyn; Brugge, Bruges; Vlissingen, Flushing; and Den Haag The Hague.

Another specimen is harbour-town Den Briel, or ‘Brielle’, the other native way to indicate that municipality. On April 1, 1572 a small flotilla carrying an assortment of English and Dutch rebels, mercenaries and rogues captured Den Briel by surprise; declaring themselves to be supporters of the Prince of Orange in his conflict with Spain. This was at a time when prospects of defeating the mighty Duke of Alva were more grim than ever.

All over Europe, folklore had that calendar day already devoted to fools. In contemporary Elizabethan English documents the ‘sea beggars’ (in Dutch ‘watergeuzen’) didn’t capture ‘Den Briel’, but ‘Brill’. (Hasty conclusions characterize fools.)