Bratislavia, Slovakia ...or is it?
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is sometimes referred to (although incorrectly) as Bratislavia. It has to do probably with Slovaks being part of larger cultural and language group knows as Slavians. Letter "I" is then inserted into Bratislava, making it Bratislavia.
Google currently indexes over twentytwo thousand pages that contain incorrect spelling of Bratislava: "Bratislavia". There are even some AdWords advertisements located on the search results page showing Bratislavia as a place to visit. Never mind that Bratislavia has never existed.
Wikipedia lists the following historical versions of Bratislava's name:
Istropolis - ancient Roman name
Posonium - Latin name
Pressbourg (Presbourg) - old French name
Pressburg (Preßburg) - German name
Pozsony - Hungarian name
Presporok - older Slovak name
Bratislava - current name
Bratislavia is not and never was among them. The temptation to use -via suffix comes mostly from the English speaking people.
Wise travel industry website owner will use this knowledge for search engine optimization of tourism-related website. As you can see, we can create a special landing page for people looking for different spellings (variations) of the same city to attract more visitors from the search engines.
PS: More information on Bratislava is available at Bratislava Guide.
:: 25.10.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Daniel ::