On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:59:18 +0000, Peter Beale
wrote:

Charles Ellson wrote:

In other cases there was an established spelling but as applies in
this someone came along later and recorded/copied it incorrectly.
Rum/Rhum
Hannover/Hanover
Hazelton/Hazleton (Pennsylvania - allegedly misspelled in the
incorporation documents in 1857 and "it's too late to change it now")

Surely Hannover/Hanover is not a misspelling, but simply the English
version - cf Wien/Vienna and countless others.

IOW a stranger getting it wrong.

Admittedly nowadays in
many cases the "native" version is normally used - Brits used to refer
to Coblence, Mayence, Brunswick, Frankfort and the like.

With increased foreign travel or transport of goods it decreases the
chance of confusion caused by several versions of the same placename
cropping up from different directions. In some cases the reversion to
original is almost total; apart from Stornoway and the island names my
road atlas only has Gaelic placenames in Lewis/Harris.