[Primoz]

Graham,

Maybe I didn't put it clear enough, I wanted to say that your comparison Marseille – Danzig/Gdańsk is out of place because Danzig/Gdańsk is one of many cities and towns in the Eastern half of Europe that have (or had) a mixed population (including Germans) (there are many many others like Brno/Brünn, Ostrava/Ostrau, Olomouc/Olmütz, Wrocław/Breslau, Opole/Oppeln, Kraków/Krakau, Maribor/Marburg etc., the names Pécs and Fünfkirchen also have a common root but it's a rather complicated story).


It's interesting to note that there are many German exonyms for Italian cities (like Rom, Mailand, Turin, Genua, Venedig, Neapel, Mantua, Padua) but very few French cities and towns have special German names (except in Alsace and Lorraine, of course). To put it short – the city of Marseille has no (different) German name.