German Cities

Looking at the suffixes used in naming cities can tell you something about the language and the geographical or topographical setting of that city.

One example I came across recently deals with the names of German cities. Of course, all of these have come over to America in the naming of cities by early German immigrants.

For example, cities with the suffix -dorf or -torf  which mean "village" and was used for small towns. Of course, after hundreds of years, that village may have become a city, such as Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and center of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. Düsseldorf is an international business and financial center and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. This "village" has a population of 592,393 (2011) and an area of 83.78 sq miles (217 km²). Doesn't sound like a village to you? Well, imagine it back when it was founded - in 1288.

Copper-engraving of a view of Düsseldorf by Matthäus Merian.
Published in "Topographia Germaniae" edition: "Topographia Westphaliae" in 1647.

Here are some other German suffixes associated with cities:

with the suffix -furt ("ford"). Examples: Erfurt, Frankfurt.

with the suffix -brücken or -brück ("bridge"). Examples: Saarbrücken, Osnabrück, Innsbruck.

with the suffix -hausen ("house"). Examples: Mülhausen (Mulhouse), Mühlhausen, Schaffhausen.

with the suffix -feld ("field"). Examples: Bielefeld, Mansfeld.

with the suffix -werth, -wörth, or -ort ("holm"). Example: Kaiserswerth, Donauwörth, Ruhrort

with the suffix -roth or -rath, -rode, -reuth, -rade ("clearing"). Example: Roth, Wernigerode, Overath. It can also be used as the prefix -Rade: Radebeul, Radevormwald.

Better Than Ezra

Better Than Ezra is an American alternative rock band based in New Orleans, Louisiana that was formed in 1988.

The four original members are vocalist and guitarist Kevin Griffin, Joel Rundell, lead guitarist, bassist Tom Drummond and drummer, Cary Bonnecaze. They were all attending Louisiana State University at the time and their first public performance was at Murphy's in Baton Rouge.

Their name is certainly odd and there is no definitive origin story. The one I like best is that it comes from a line in Ernest Hemingway's novel A Moveable Feast. Hemingway is describing a very annoying sound as "...no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon."

Fans of the group (Ezralites) know that the band had a "Chimes Street Demo" cassette tape in 1988 and it is something fans pride themselves in owning. The band released a cassette-only album, Surprise, in 1990.

Joel Rundell, the band's lead guitarist, committed suicide on August 8, 1990. After a break, Griffin, Drummond and Bonnecaze reunited Better Than Ezra as a trio in late 1990 playing house parties and fraternity shows across the southern U.S. into the early 90s.

Their first nationally-distributed album was Deluxe in 1993 on the indie Swell Records. The album got them noticed and got airplay and they signed with Elektra Records in 1995. Elektra rereleased Deluxe and "Good" reached #1 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album went platinum by the end of 1995. Drummond said in a 1998 interview with CNN, "It took us seven years to get signed, and then seven weeks to get to No. 1." when describing the overnight success of Deluxe and its single "Good".

Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode is an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan (lead vocals, occasional songwriter since 2005), Martin Gore (keyboards, guitar, vocals, chief songwriter after 1981), Andy Fletcher (keyboards) and Vince Clarke (keyboards, chief songwriter 1980–81). Clarke left the band after the release of their 1981 debut album, Speak & Spell, and was replaced by Alan Wilder (keyboards, drums, occasional songwriter) with Gore taking over songwriting. Wilder left the band in 1995. Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher have since continued as a trio.

In 1980, Clarke, Gore and Fletcher formed a band called Composition of Sound, with Clarke on vocals/guitar, Gore on keyboards and Fletcher on bass, but after a short time, Clarke and Fletcher switched to synthesizers. Dave Gahan joined the band after Clarke heard him perform locally singing David Bowie's "Heroes."


The new band took its name from a French fashion magazine, Dépêche mode.  The verb to hurry in French is se dépêcher where as dépêcher is to dispatch which is what it would mean in this context (from Old French despesche/despeche as a "news report" though the band also took note of despecher - to hurry) and mode meaning "fashion." Gahan was attending college and studying fashion and knew of the magazine. He brought it to the band and said it meant "hurried fashion" or "fashion dispatch."

They first performed as Depeche Mode in May 1980 and made their recording debut that same year on the Some Bizzare Album with the song "Photographic", which was later re-recorded for their debut album Speak & Spell.


Best of Depeche Mode

Algiers and Algeria

Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers.

The North African country of Algeria is named for the city of Algiers which was the city chosen by the French as its capital when they colonized it in 1830. Adding "Algiers" to the Latinate "country" suffix -ia gave the modern city its name. The city name ii Arabic translates literally as "the islands" and is a reference to four islands formerly off the coast that have been joined to the mainland since 1525.

Al-Jazā’ir is itself a truncated form of the city's older name, Jazā’ir Banī Mazghannā, meaning "The Islands of the Sons of Mazghanna." That name was used by early medieval geographers. The city was built in 960 on the ruins of the ancient Roman city Icosium.

A resident of Algiers was known as an "Algerine" in the mid-17th century and that name was synonymous with "pirate" in England and the United States in early 1800s.

Algiers is located on a bay of the Mediterranean Sea and is still an important port. Algiers today is a large city with a metropolitan population of over 3 million. While downtown Algiers looks modern, the capital is struggling to keep up with rapid growth and standards of living for most of its population is very poor.

Stone Temple Pilots

The American rock band, Stone Temple Pilots (sometimes just abbreviated as STP) was formed in San Diego, California in the mid-1980s.

The band members include Scott Weiland (lead vocals), Robert DeLeo (bass guitar, vocals) and his brother Dean DeLeo (guitar) and Eric Kretz (drums, percussion).

At first, they were named "Mighty Joe Young,"  but after signing a recording contract with Atlantic Records, they needed  a name change. Mighty Joe Young had played several gigs but they discovered while recording their first album that there was already a blues singer who went under that name.

The story is that the band members had liked the STP Motor Oil stickers and decided to use that and make up something to fit the abbreviation. After throwing out ideas, they settled without a lot of thought on "Stone Temple Pilots" without it having any deeper symbolic meaning. Weiland recalled in an interview in Spin magazine that another possibility was "Shirley Temple’s Pussy."

Their debut album, Core (1992) was a hit and they were one of the most commercially successful bands of the 1990s.

They released four more studio albums: Purple (1994), Core (1996), No 4 (1999) and Shangri-LA DEE DA (2001).

The band split up in 2003 and band members moved on to other bands including Velvet Revolver and Army of Anyone.

STP reformed in 2008 for a reunion tour and ended up releasing a new self-titled album, Stone Temple Pilots in 2010 and have been touring since.

StoneTemplePilots.com