3 ms·

That's how foreign names work. People hear the name used in another language, and then they adapt the pronunciation and/or spelling to their own language. As a

That's how foreign names work. People hear the name used in another language, and then they adapt the pronunciation and/or spelling to their own language. As a Finnish speaker, "Ganges" has the familiar form of a name borrowed from Greek or Latin, and it does not need further adaptation. "Ganga", on the other hand, sounds awkward in Finnish. Had ancient Finns been in contact with India, we would probably know the river as Kanka or Kankajoki ("Kanka river"). The latter in particular sounds like a proper Finnish river name.

gerdesj 5y ago
That's if we can even all agree on how to pronounce "Ganges"! Should it rhyme with cheese or oranges; are the g's hard or soft? In en_GB the first g is hard and the second one soft and the word rhymes with cheese. Oh, and the a is short. Place names are notoriously tricky. The town I live in is now called Yeovil. It has well over sixty documented spellings since around 500CE. It started off as Gifle - bend in the river. G -> Y is a common Old English/Saxon to modern English thing (-gard and -yard, -burg and -bury, dag or tag and day.) If you squint really hard you can get the rest of the word OK. It was Ival, Givelle, Evil and all sorts of spellings on the way to today. There was also a vowel shift en-route and a generally open approach to spelling.