[qingcharles]

The name of the city is 東京 -- anything in Latin characters is a rough transliteration. Tokio was the common spelling in European texts until some time last century, and is still used regularly in continental Europe.

see also, e.g. Tokio Hotel

[Dilettante_]

A reference to Tokio Hotel was not on my HN bingo card

[echelon]

This is the first time Tokio Hotel has been mentioned on HN in over ten years.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

That has me thinking of Neutral Milk Hotel. Totally different vibes.

[qingcharles]

Thank you for doing the background work. Wild they've never been mentioned before. And this time, not in relation to their music...

[labster]

Tokio is a different (masculine) name in Japanese, pronounced quite differently. /tokʲio/ vs. /to̞ːkʲo̞ː/.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokio_(given_name)

[j16sdiz]

We are talking about the spelling centuries ago, when the romanisation were less standardised