There are a lot of cities in Central Europe that have "legitimate" alternate names because of fairly large minority communities. Prag/Praha is a good example of this, as is Danzig/Gdansk. Many of these alternate names are in German, in part because Central Europe was for years dominated and then divided by Prussia and Austria -- kingdoms that were administered in German.

In the case of Genf/Genève, the town itself is indeed in a French-speaking canton of Switzerland. But the country has four official languages, and the German-speakers of that country call it Genf and not Genève.