What's in a name?

Or How do you spell Siena? One N or two?

I’m talking about the city in Tuscany visited by millions from all over the world, led in groups of twenty by a flag carrying guide. For this is a World Heritage site, acknowledged for the remarkable preservation of its walled city and which was once the most populous and richest on the Italian peninsular. It’s also the region of Siena, the Greater London to the better known City and West End. It includes the moonscape landscape of the Crete favoured by the rich and famous, the thermal baths of Bagni di Petriolo bathed in by Italy’s patron saint Catherine of Siena, and the Abbey of San Galgano where the saint implanted his sword in a stone. And it’s this wider meaning of the place that is the setting for my three historical novels, Colours of Siena, Burnt Siena and a third which will also have Siena in the title.

And yes, I’ve given you the right answer.

Siena. With one n.

So, imagine my angst when preparing my first book for publication when I saw both publisher and cover designer had spelt my book title with two.  I imagined the unboxing moment. The courier arrives with my books. I open the parcel and smell the paper, hold my precious work in my hands, kiss the cover, and as I move it further away, my eyes focus on the words. Colours of SIENNA! Oh no! Mind racing ahead. How quickly can I get reprints. How many copies to be pulped? It didn’t bear thinking about and thank goodness it didn’t happen.

So why is it so many get it wrong?

Is it all down to Sienna Millar, the actress? She hadn’t figured much in my world up to that point, apart from my son-in-law pointing out a house she’d bought looking over one of London’s lovely parks. But of course, she’s a megastar, and would come to the mind of many before what I think of as ‘my’ city. After all it’s been in the shadow of its near neighbour, Florence, for centuries.

And then there’s a town in the States called SIENNA. Where did that double n come from? I can’t believe Italian immigrants misspelt the name of the place they’d come from. Or were many of those emigrating illiterate?Certainly I've seen some earlier English travellers, visiting Italy on their Grand Tour of Europe, spelling the name with two ns.

What I do know is that the postal address of the place I lived in for sixteen years, is spelt SIENA, one n.

Then I remember. There was a time during my gradual engagement with the area, before I found the house of my dreams and started the legal process of buying it, that I too thought the spelling was SIENNA. Then when I was checking the detail of my purchase documents I noticed it was spelt Siena. At first I couldn’t believe it. But there it was, on the property register too. I was shocked. How could I not have noticed? The name had been on the blue buses I travelled on to and from the city, on my train tickets and on all the road signs. It’s impossible to miss. Except I did.

Of course, the one n is obvious to an Italian speaker, because double letters are given a longer sound. Like Nonna, meaning grandmother, which is pronounced more like Non-na. The long letter in Siena isn’t the n, it’s the e, the pronounced more like ‘air’: Si-air-na. How could I have been so ignorant of this key fact about the place I’d fallen in love with? What sort of person misspells her best friend’s name? But this discovery was in its way, the start of my true adventure, of getting to know the place more deeply than one does as a tourist.

So my sympathies go to all those who think Siena, the city and region, is spelt with a double n.

Siena has been by-passed by tourists and by authors for many years and my mission is to put the city and its surrounding area on the historical fiction map.

So if you’re planning to take a holiday there, or searching for one of my books, please spell the name of this wonderful place, the Tuscan Siena, with a single n.

My latest book, Burnt Siena, is available on Amazon

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