Sopron or Ödenburg? by James O'Fee - Impala Publishers Blog Page: "Careful readers of the Impala blog may have noticed this comment added to Tuesday's post by a Hungarian reader -
Please use the city name Sopron. Nobody use Öedenburg in this time. This is an old, 'historical' name for Sopron.
I have been quoting the account of published in 1854, whose author, Merle d'Aubigné, uses mainly the German names. Merle d'Aubigné, or his translator, writes Œdenburg, where I suspect that the Œ is an attempt to represent the German Ö in English (the German 'O-umlaut' may be written as 'Oe' as well). Today the use of o and e, written with a ligature as a single letter, has dropped out in English.
'Hungary' as a political entity did not exist in 1854. It was merely a 'geographical expression'. Emperor Franz Josef, or rather his Russian allies, had crushed the Hungarians and their hopes in the 'War of Independence' of 1848-9. The Austrian Habsburgs ruled Hungary as their direct personal property and used German as the official language. It was only in 1869 that the Emperor granted Hungary 'Home Rule'."
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