Salonica or Salonika?

[Tony Lund]

I need to pick the correct English name for this place, is it Salonica or Salonika?

Do we have an English and an American spelling here, or is it a case of an old one and a modern one?

Tony.

[HERITAGE PLUS]

Tony

I'm not sure whether this will help or not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salonika

Dave

[Tony Lund]

Thanks, it looks like a case of please yourself!

"The popular Greek name Σαλονίκη Saloniki gives it its alternate English name - formerly the common name Salonika (also spelled Salonica)."

Salonika seems to be used more at the time of the war, so I will go with that.

Tony.

[Staffsyeoman]

It's old and new/authentic and anglicised usage. A bit like Peking/Beijing. Looks like Salonika is now the accepted usage, I'd go that way.

[CSMMo]

Wakefield and Moody in their recent "Under the Devils Eye" (a book well worh reading) use "Salonika". In any event, today you'll find it as Thessaloniki. I found that it was difficult to find places named in War Diaries until I found out that the British used an older map of the area (1903? 1908?) which must be used to find these locations today and find the new names.

Mike Morrison

[Tony Lund]

Salonika seems to be used more at the time of the war, so I will go with that.

Tony.

I just remembered my grandfather’s service papers mention Salonika a couple of times so I checked and it was Salonica, but I think I will still use the K version.

Tony.

[chrisefstathiou]

hallo from thessaloniki.

Thessaloniki was founded 315 BC by king Cassandre and named after the sister of Alexander the Great,but during the regular usual tactic of the Turkhish , to change the place names, towns, etc. for propaganda purposes and conversions to Islam. Thus, Thessaloniki became Salonika, Konstantinoupoli became Ιnstampoul etc.I hope to have given you an answer, and sorry for my english.

Chris.

[Revan]

I'm not English (I'm sorry), but I think the both are good.

I read often K, but sometimes C, as there in this old book "The story of the Salonica Army" (1918) by George Ward PRICE.

I have this old English paper with K:

In English, I use K.

[sw63]

You can blame the Romans for the confusion between C & K in a lot of Greek words. Basically the Greek alphabet has the letter Kappa which is a hard K sound in English. There is no C in Greek. The Roman alphabet didn't have a K so they used C instead.

Therefore either is "tekhnically" correct, but I would tend to use a K for a Greek place name because it is closer in appearance to a Kappa.

Simon

[west coast]

on my grandads m.s.m medal card is overstamped , salonica.

[MartinWills]

The Salonika Campaigh Society use Salonika and generally consider that to be most appropriate

[pmaasz]

The two usages exist to this day. As a frequent visitor to the Greek islands I find, for example, Ithaca and Ithaka; Cephalonia and Kephalonia. Or even 'f' replacing the 'ph'. For myself I prefer 'K' for the same reason as Simon Wilkinson states in his post: there is no 'C' in Greek. But the English language is so individual that we have Crete and not Krete for the Greek Kriti, and Corfu and not Korfu for Kerkira.