Starting this week, users can look up their destination in Friesland in the Dutch National Rail (NS) travel planner by their Frisian name.
Omrop Fryslân reports that NS made the change in recognition of the LF2018 Capital of Culture year. The feature was approved after the plans were positively received by the provincial government. Travelers can search for stations in Frisian, but in some cases, the display name will still be the Dutch version.
The Leeuwarder Courant says that not every single village is recognised by the travel planner app or website just yet, and that some Frisian names are just literal translations of Dutch names. The Frisian title of several stations – Dronryp, De Westereen and Feanwâlden – were already recognised as the official names rather than the Dutch variant starting in 2015.
The Leeuwarden paper also reports that NS has accepted variations on the Dutch-language names of stations in the Netherlands in the past: during carnival, the towns of Den Bosch (Oeteldonk) and Eindhoven (Lampegat) could also be found under their traditional festive titles. However, those names are only temporary, whereas the Frisian names are the official names of those places.
