The Two-Headed Eagle

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Since border changes resulting from the two world wars have altered beyond recognition many of the place names used in this story, a glossary is attached giving those most commonly used in 1916 and their modern equivalents.

The names given here attempt to follow Austrian official usage of the period. However, most of the story takes place in the regions where the old Danubian Monarchy bordered Italy, and in no other part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—except perhaps for Transylvania—was there such complete anarchy as regards local place names. Virtually every settle­ment above the size of a hamlet had three names—Italian, German and Slovene—and there seem to have been no hard-and-fast rules, even in official documents, about which one would be used; except that in 1916 German or Italian would still normally be preferred to Slovene when the speaker was an educated person. Thus the small town which is nowadays called Bovec was quite likely to have been referred to as Plezzo by an Italian—or as Flitsch by a German-speaker.

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