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I've previously only known Cambridge to be translated as: 剑桥.
Flipping through some things today I came across an old poem entitled:《再别康桥》
The Wikipedia page has the following note on the poem:
作者最后一次重访英国剑桥（旧译康桥）
Aside from this piece of work 康桥 doesn't seem to get a lot of results online. 康 does seem closer to Cambridge than 剑 as well.
When and why did Cambridge go from being 康桥 and become 剑桥?
英国的康桥，如今大部份人都称之为剑桥，这个译法很特别，但是居然 还是被人们接受了。一般来讲，中国人翻译外国的地名大多采用音译， 如“翡冷翠”、“枫丹白露”，都是其中的上乘之作；也有不多的一些 外国地名是采用字面的义译，如“牛津”、“地中海”，可算别具一格， 但鲜有音译和义译混合的。“剑桥”是少见的一例，剑桥的“剑”乃是 “Cam”的音译，“桥”是“Bridge”的义译。由此可以推断， 当初作如此翻译的人士，出身大概总归是在闽粤两地，那里的方言仍然 保留着古汉语的入声，因此才会想到把“Cam”译作“剑”。
《两处康桥的回忆》，维一《域外怀旧录》
Weiyi, the author of this essay thinks, the translator who had translated "Cambridge" as "剑桥" comes from Fujian or Guangdong because the people in these two areas say "cam" as "剑", it's their accent. Obviously, the people who speak Mandarin Chinese won't think "cam" is similar to "剑", maybe a bit like "卡姆", but "卡姆桥" sounds "ugly" and too ordinary.
In Chinese-Western languages translation, this situation is very very common, because many reasons. For example, Florence went from being "翡冷翠" and became "佛罗伦萨" because "翡冷翠" is from "Firenze", "Florence" in Italian, and "佛罗伦萨" is from English. Germany(Deutschland) went from being "独国" and became "德国" because "独" isn't a common "译名用字": Chinese think some special Chinese Characters are commonly use in foreign proper nouns, such as "尔", "斯", "格", "德", etc. If you can use these to translate names of people or places or other words from Western countries, choose them.
