Translating royal names is a relic of European history
It is time to give it up
The weekend after Queen Elizabeth II died, the continental European press was much taken with the arrangements for the royal transition. But readers of the Diari de Girona—which explained in Catalan the change in titles of the former Prince of Wales and his wife—might have been a bit baffled. They would have encountered a few familiar people: Elisabet II was the late queen, and the former Príncep Carles is her son. But who is this Llitera of which the paper spoke? Readers on Twitter figured it out: a llitera is a stretcher or a bunk-bed in Catalan, or a translation of the Spanish camilla, little bed. The paper quickly restored the new queen consort’s name to Camilla.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Posh in translation”
Culture September 24th 2022
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