Ray Saintonge wrote:
For Gothenburg/Göteborg I see the issue as more in transition than unstable. I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998" and it uses "Göteborg". This seems to reflect a modern trend. My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds both alternatives and show "Götheborg" with the extra "h" as an alternative Swedish spelling..
I doubt that "Götheborg" was used in Sweden after 1860. It was in use earlier, when Swedish spelling was more random and before "foreign elements" like "th" were weeded out.
Yes, this is probably in transition. Today, the non-Swedes who discover Göteborg do so on the web or as tourists. They *read* the name and it is spelled "Göteborg" on Swedish street signs and maps. These tourists seldom need to learn how to pronounce the name.
The city was founded as a sea port in 1621 after Sweden got access to the west coast, which used to be Danish/Norwegian. Many of the people who "built" the new city were merchants from England and Scotland with names like "Chalmers" (see www.chalmers.se), resulting in English often being *spoken* in the city, both by visiting sailors and the locals who catered to them.
The same transition might happen to Hanover/Hannover and Munich/München, but hardly to Germany/Deutschland or Sweden/Sverige. Hanover used to have strong ties with England, but that is not the case anymore, and Swedes who write English texts about the CeBIT expo don't know there is an English spelling that differs from the German/Swedish one.
(How long will it take for the spelling in my .signature to catch on?)