Nevograd

What a thread at LanguageHat’s! No one in his right mind — a traditionalist would argue — would found a capital city where Peter the Great did. If that marshy spot were such a great place for a town, how come that nobody — neither the Vikings, nor Novgorod or Pskov, nor the Swedes — had tried it before Peter? Nyenskans was just a fortress and wasn’t quite there; Oreshek was farther east, and Old Ladoga stands on the good old Volkhov river. It took a thalassomaniac to build St. Pete, which in its artifice only deserves an artificial name. That’s how Nevograd can be justified.

One comment

  1. Let us call our city any way we please. Our grandparents defended it against invaders under the name of Leningrad and our parents voted for its original name, St. Petersburg, in a referendum. Most of the time, we prefer to call the city just Piter. St. Pete is in Florida, not on the banks of Neva. Thank you!

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