Isn't the actual name Marcus Antonius? I wonder why we use the anglicised version for him, but the latin names for most other Romans
Examples.
Roma is Rome in English and Milano is Milan.
London is Londra in Italian but Manchester is Manchester and Liverpool is Liverpool.
Livorno (a small Italian town where English poets liked to spend their time) is Leghorn.
Aachen (a German city that used to be the residence of Charlemagne) is Acquisgrana in Italian.
Nobody has been translating city names anymore but Londra is going to stay. Aachen is not very famous but probably Acquisgrana is even less so. I should check current history books of schools.
> The city name is from Roman Colonia Florentia, "flowering colony," either literal or figurative, and became Old Italian Fiorenze, modern Italian Firenze.
https://italyinview.com/italian-places/italian-cities/floren... elaborates:
> The Romans were the founders of Florence. Realizing the importance of a thoroughfare towards the Po plain, Ceasar in 59 B.C. ordered the establishment of a colony on the north bank of the Arno. The foundation is thought to have taken place in the spring, during the Floral Games, or Ludi Florales: hence the name Florentia, which was given to the city. Flora was the goddess of flowers and gardens, and the mother of spring in Roman mythology. Tuscan dialect turned the Latin Florentia into Fiorenza — a name which is to be found on Renaissance frescoes, and which was later shortened to Firenze.
That I can follow.
> Florentia, [...] became Old Italian Fiorenze
Still lost. I know accents are thick and an ex used to wax poetic about the fluidity of names, especially at the intersection of thick regional accents and illiteracy. But this one is still a bit of a stretch.
It's Londres in French which seems related, I wonder where they came from though.
When you know that the French name is Anvers it makes a little more sense.
By the way, Leuven (Belgium) is Lovanio even if I hardly heard that translated name until they hosted the UCI World Championship in 2021.
They're not translated as much as they are derived from the same etymons used by the languages spoken there. Italian Acquisgrana or French Aix-la-Chapelle derive from Latin Aquis {capella, grana, villa}. The only properly official name most cities had throughout Europe was in Latin rather than any vernacular, including in areas where non-Romance languages were spoken such as German, English, Polish and so on.
That isn't the kind of thing that happens at a particular point in time. It's a process that takes hundreds of years.
We also use classical Latin names for pre-classical Romans who would have written their own names rather differently.