This study examines a pure act of transposition, or how the passage from narrative to opera libretto makes a lexical modification appear in the designation of historical places. Very precisely named in the Mérimée novella, some places are synthesized into a single "over there" that goes almost unnoticed since it is so common. This lexicon, however, is an active participant in the Carmen myth as a polysemic and complex element of the blurring found in opera.