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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, why are you using the old name of Kaliningrad? I thought it was different only in Polish language.

Not the biggest fan of naming things after communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalinin

He may be most know for being the one signing the order for Katyn massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

George Washington signed order for Sullivan expedition, yet American capital is named after him. Should we use the name of one of Nacotchtank settlements on that territory instead?

This is the reason it is recommended in Poland to call it Królewiec, apart from it being under Polish rule for some time too.

It's Královec in Czech.

as we know: https://visitkralovec.cz/

Good to know, thanks. It’s reasonable to expect language-specific names, just strange to see it in English (even in German that is a bit weird).

It's more like a running joke by now, giving Královec 'back' to the Czech Republic means they could finally have a proper overseas harbor and a Navy. Just think of the possibilities :)

Koenigsberg is a somewhat known name due to Euler's bridges problem. Kant also lived there.

I have seen his grave there :) It was renamed long time ago and the name is not contested neither by Germans nor by Russians (it’s not liked either, but the government abandoned the idea of renaming it back for symbolic reasons — it’s not about commemoration of Kalinin at all, nobody remembers him). Among Russians Koenig is indeed used as informal name akin to Piter (St.Petersburg) or Ekat (Ekaterinburg).

What is old may one day be new again. The two are sometimes just a referendum apart.

Yeah, Poles used to call Vilnius (Lithuanian capital) Wilno. And what Poles call Gdańsk, Germans used to call Danzig.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius#Etymology_and_other_na...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gda%C5%84sk#History

Kalinin was a pedophile and even worse, a communist. A lot of people who live there prefer the old name as well.

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