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Istanbul (etymology)

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Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul or Tsargrad is one of the biggest metropoles of the world.

Contents

Names

It also had nicknames such as: Islambol, Kushta, Gosdantnubolis, Tsarigrad, Rumiyya al-kubra, New Jerusalem, the Eye of the World, the Refuge of the Universe, the Gate of Happiness.City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924-Phillip Mansel-Introduction page-ISBN 0312187084 Jews often called it "Costa." The Angles and Saxons called the city "Micklegard," meaning "Great Fortress."

English

The Sublime Porte — the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, so-called for its gate-location within the Topkapi and often used as a metonym for "Constantinople" in European diplomatic notes (the same way Whitehall would be used in the case of the British Foreign Office, or Foggy Bottom to refer to the United States Department of State), Also Stamboul (used by British and other diplomatic corps in "The City")

Greek

Originally founded by Greek colonists as Byzantium taking its name from their leader Byzas from Megara, the city was designated the eastern capital of of the Roman Empire on May 11, 330, by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who also undertook a major construction project, essentially rebuilding the city.

Byzantium was renamed Nova Roma ("New Rome"), but this name does not seem to have caught-on; the city soon became known as Constantinople, "the City of Constantine", referencing as an honorific eponym the man who brought it to such prominence.

Some Byzantine writers would vary the use of the names Byzantium and Constantinople depending on religious historical context; the former was associated with the city's pagan roots, but Constantinople had always been a Christian city.

The term "New Rome" lent itself to the polemical writings of the day. Following the Great Schism, the city's rivalry with (the original) Rome reached a new peak and Byzantine writers even claimed that Old Rome was too stained by the blood of martyrs to lead Christianity. To the present day, the Patriarch of the city's title includes the wording "of Constantinople, New Rome".

Slavic

A historical East and South Slavic name for the city was Tsargrad. The word is an Old Church Slavonic translation of the Greek, presumably of Βασιλέως Πόλις ("Basileus Polis"), "the city of the emperor [king]": combining the Slavonic words tsar for "Caesar" and grad for "city", it stood for "the City of the Emperor [Caesar]".

The word is an Old Church Slavonic translation of the Greek Βασιλὶς Πόλις. Combining the Slavonic words tsar for "Caesar" and grad for "city", it stood for "the City of the Caesar". Per Thomsen, the Old Russian form influenced an Old Norse appellation of Constantinople, Miklagård (Мikligarðr).

Bulgarians also applied the word to Turnovgrad, one of the capitals of the Bulgarian tsars. Since the Balkans fell under Ottoman rule, the Bulgarian word has been used exclusively as another name of Constantinople, because in the vernacular of the Balkan Slavs the Ottoman sultans were called tsars. As the zeitgeist which spawned the term has faded, the word Tsargrad is now an archaic term in Russian. It is however still used occasionally in Bulgarian.

Scandinavian

Scandinavian Varangian: Miklagård, from Old Norse Miklagarð (mikill + garð = "big city" or "grand city").

Turkish

Kostantiniyye (قسطنطنيه), with variations on the name soon cropping up: (در سعادت Dersaadet, در عاليه Derâliye, پایتخت Pâyitaht); Dersaadet means "The Porte of Felicity", Derâliye "The Sublime Porte" (a variation on باب عالی Bâb-ı Âlî, used for the administrative quarters), and Pâyitaht "The Seat of the Throne".

Since before the conquest, Turks called the city Istanbul, but officially used the name Kostantiniyye, which means "The City of Constantine" in Ottoman Turkish. The use of the name Kostantiniyye was, in fact, banned for a period under Sultan Mustafa III.

İstanbul

The name İstanbul comes from the Greek words εις την Πόλη – eis tēn Pólē (pronounced [is tim boli]) or στην Πόλη, from Ancient Greek eìs tēn Polin (εἰς τὴν Πόλιν) and meaning "in the city" or "to the city".[Istanbul—Encyclopædia Britannica] Similar examples of modern Turkish town names derived from Greek are İzmit (from İznikmit which was Nicomedia and İznik (from Greek, Nicaea: "eis tin Nikaia" (pron. [is tin nikea]), becoming [znik].

The intermediate form "Stamboul" was commonly used by the Turks in the 19th century. Because of the custom of affixing an i before certain words that start with two consonants (as in "İzmir" from Smyrna: in a coincidence of s + m, the s turns to z in pronunciation, as has been attested since early Byzantine times and in modern Greek usage), it was pronounced in Turkish as İstambul. (The /m/ in the middle is also an example of linguistic assimilation, whereby the /n/ becomes an /m/ before a /p/ or /b/, as in çenber → çember, anbar → ambar; such rules are not, however, always observed in proper nouns like Istanbul. A similar change occurs in Greek, where an /n/ before a /p/ becomes an [m], and the /p/ after /n/ becomes a [b] in pronunciation.)

Although it is spelled and pronounced İstanbul, it can also be pronounced as /ɯstanbul/ or /istambul/ in the colloquial language.

Timeline

See also

Notes

 

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