Turin? Or Torino? The decision by NBC and USA Today (and the IOC) to use the Italian name for the city continues to ruffle some stylistic feathers.
(Ironically, for those folks who tout the “Well, we should pronounce it the way the Italians do” meme, evidently the name as used in the local (if “fading”) Piedmont language is, in fact, “Turin,” though possibly with the emphasis on the second syllable.)
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Confused…
So why is this an issue? It is what is on all the offical “things” including the symbol for this olympiad.
The same is usually true for all Olympics — but previously media outlets (per normal style books) used their native name for the city — thus we have the Munich Olympics, the Athens Olympics, etc. Similarly, the IOC in English language media would use the English name for the city (outside of any canned logos).
In this case, NBC and the IOC have decide that “Torino” is the “better” name to use.
Interestingly, looking at Olympics venues, we’ve ended up with a lot of cities that are either English-language — Atlanta, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Calgary — or are, in English, effectively no different from the native tongue — Barcelona, Seoul, Nagano, Lillehammer, Albertville, Sarajevo. Athens (“Athena”) and Moscow (“Moskva”) and Munich (“München”) seem to be the primary exceptions.
Beijing (2008) looks to be using that name on its logos.