It seems like a lot of primary sources for this article used the French name. Even if it was incorrect, maybe that was how it was commonly referred to outside of Belgium at the time?
Belgium was in an odd state of bilingualism at the time. While the people of the area would speak Flemish (“Dutch”), those in positions of power and education institutions would use French as the Lingua Franca.
I was born in Leuven and lived there for 30 years of my life - it would be pretty odd to see contemporary references as “Louvain” by those local to it.
Because you don't know the place or its history as well as you seem to think you do. Flamingantism is a scourge upon Belgium.
Louvain is fine in English. Much like ruuban is the correct form in Japanese.
There's a whole article full of interesting historical context. Yet you comment on the perceived (and incorrect, thus imagined) slight against your mother tongue. This is a good example of why Belgium is such a hot mess. We'd rather spend time bickering about irrelevant nonsense than in addressing real problems.
From your perspective maybe? From my perspective I don’t understand why they need to make everything half french, especially in an ostensibly Dutch speaking part of the country.
It’s not like we use an alternative french name for Amsterdam.
