Talk:Names of Istanbul

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Archived discussions: Talk:Etymology of Istanbul/archive 1

Contents

[edit] "Is tin poli"?

If we are going to have an article on such an esoteric subject, let us try to be accurate. The belief that Istanbul derives from eis tin Poli is a piece of folk etymology, on a par with the belief that Rome is named after Romulus, or Britain after Brittas. The name Istanbul is a perfectly straightforward Turkish rendering of Konstantinoupolis. Why would the Ottomans name their capital city with a meaningless (to them) snippet of Greek? Adam 13:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

In the same way that they named Iznik, Izmir, Trabzon, Ankara, et cetera. --Hectorian 14:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Correct. The whole Ottoman tradition was not to rename cities, but rather to refer to them with a turkicised version of their pre-Ottoman name. Thessaloniki to Selanik is another good example. So you would expect them to call Constantinople a shortened Turkish version of Konstantinoupolis, and that's exactly what Istanbul is. Adam 14:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure if i have understood what exactly u mean, but have in mind that the Greeks (during the Byzantine times and today) call Istanbul simply 'Poli' (City). so, a corruption of this name (Poli) accompanied by the preposition meaning 'to' is also possible. Do not forget that 'Iznik' comes from a similar phrase 'eis Nikaia', or in the IPA 'iz nik(ea)', meaning simply 'to Nicaia'. --Hectorian 15:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I do not see the need to replace one guess with another. I do not accept the εις την Πόλη etymology as a fact, and neither do I accept the Constantinople origin theory as a fact. None of them should be called a fact in the article without reliable sources. Lacking that, both should be called theories. My guess is that the Constantinople origin theory is right, but as there seems to be no proof, the article should not claim any certainty. Mlewan 17:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • In reply to Hector: Istanbul is a Turkish name, not a Greek one, so what the Greeks called the city is irrelevant. What is relevant is how the Ottomans named the Greek cities they conquered. They didn't rename them, they merely used turkicised versions of their Greek names. It makes no sense to suppose that the Ottomans would have adopted a Greek phrase as a new name for their capital.
  • In reply to Mlewan: Of course we do not know as a verifiable fact what the etymological history of "Istanbul" is, since the Ottomans did not write learned treatises about it. But the name obviously has to have an etymology of some sort, and we therefore have to choose the more likely of the two candidate theories. My point is that the Konstantinoupolis >> Istanbul theory is simpler (Ockham's razor) and consistent with Ottoman naming practices, whereas the "eis tin Poli" is nothing but a piece of unsubstantiated folk etymology, undoubtedly invented by Greeks as a joke on the Ottomans. Adam 00:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Simpler? A k disappeared. An n disappeared. Two full syllables of "tino" disappeared. And you have no evidence on when they disappeared or why they disappeared or any intermediate forms. Your etymology is the most sensible one, but it is by no means simple or verified. The εις την Πόλη etymology sounds ridiculous to you and me, but it is not excluded that it is right in spite of that. And neither is it excluded that it influenced the contraction of Constantinople to Istanbul. Mlewan 10:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Mlewan. Adam's theory lacks academic support, since the changes he suggest that have happened from Konstantinoupolis >> Istanbul are not compatible with linguistics... whole syllabes and letters simply disappeared! the theory εις την Πόλη is tin Poli, no matter if it seems ridiculous to both of u, it is perfectly compatible with linguistics: 'is+tan(i=a is not a big change, having in mind that even many ancient greek dialects had 'tan' instead of 'tin' as an article)+bul(p after n is heard as b in modern greek as well, o=u is somehow an expansion of o and the ommittion of the last i can be easily explained for a language with no grammatical gender as the turkish language is-in greek -η indicates the female gender). as u see Adam, it doesn't seem a piece of unsubstantiated folk etymology, undoubtedly invented by Greeks as a joke on the Ottomans now... lol Hectorian 11:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, just to make it clear, the fact that you phonematically can deduct Istanbul from εις την Πόλη is no proof for the other side either. There are plenty of false friends out there. To me the big problem is the semantic shift from "to the city" which is supposed to become a city name. Mlewan 12:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I can't see a major difference between mine and yours opinions. u say they used turkicised versions of their Greek names, i suggest they used turkicised versions of their Greek names/phraeses concerning them. PS: i never said that Istanbul is a Greek name! u will hardly find any Greek calling this city by that name... Hectorian 00:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence they used "Greek phrases", and no conceivable reason they would do so. Adam 04:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Mlewan - yes, several syllables of Konstantinoupolis disappeared when it morphed into Istanbul. Likewise letters disappeared when Thessaloniki became Selanik, when Trebizond became Trabzon and when Adrianoupolis became Edirne. That's how the Ottomans rendered Greek names into Turkish. Since they did it consistently, this constitutes firm evidence for my thesis as against the "eis tin Poli" thesis. And we do have an intermediate form in Stamboul. Adam 11:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Consistently? In which way did they disappear "consistently"? In none of the cases you cite, any syllables have disappeared from the middle of a word. At the beginning - yes. At the end - yes. In the middle - not at all. And in the Constantinople -> Istanbul shift we are supposed to accept that two middle syllables disappear without any trace. And how would "stamboul" be an intermediate form? It is simply Istanbul without the initial "i". It could equally well be a later derivative form.
But let that be as it may. Just come with a reference or a reliable source, which supports your theory. That is the way to settle discussions in Wikipedia. Mlewan 12:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Kindly do not distort what I write. I did not say that syllables disappear consistently. I said that the Ottomans consistently shortened Greek place names, and I have provided examples. Adam 12:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

But my main point was to request sources for your theory. Where are they? We cannot use original research, as you well know. Mlewan 17:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

This discussion seems to be ignoring the fact that there were two Ottoman names for Constantinople: the official one, Kostantiniyye (literally "Constantinian" -- the full literal translation would have been something like şehir-i-Kostantiniyye), and the popular one, Istanbul. Pace Adam, Kostantiniyye is actually not just a phonetic rendering of the Greek name. As for Istanbul, it seems highly likely that the "I" is an epenthetic adjustment to Turkish phonotactics, as the name "stambul" was also widely used. But it doesn't seem unlikely that the "stam" reflects στην. Η Πολις was (and is) a common name for Constantinople, not just some nonce phrase referring to it. Compare the Arab city Medina (literally City). And στην Πολη [stim'boli] is almost identical to Stambul. And where did the "z" in Iznik (Greek [nikea]) come from? So it hardly seems farfetched that Greek [stimboli] became Turkish [stambul], much more likely than that [konstandi'nupoli] became [stambul], with a loss of an accented syllable! Anyway, this is not for us to resolve here. Are there good references on one or both sides of the issue? Until there are, let's present both theories. --Macrakis 14:57, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

So long as "eis tin Poli" is not presented as an uncontested fact, as it was before I rewrote it. Adam 01:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, here is a resource for you Istanbul was Constantinople ?
Now all of you who are capable can make the article of a value for Wikipedia. --Azaza767 01:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

That is an interesting article, although I don't think it proves anything except that the city had several different names in the Ottoman period. Incidentally it is not true that the city is still always called Constantinople in Greece. I was in Thessaloniki in 2002 and I bought a train ticket to Istanbul. The station signage and the Greek Railways ticket both said Istanbul. Adam 01:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Well does at least give, in a some sense, proof to what you said earlier and it does just say restive to acepting, not resistant acepting. --Azaza767 02:03, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
To Adam: when we say that in Greece the city is always called 'Constantinople', we mean by the Greeks. of course, the tourists who are in Greece and want to travel there, will hear it called 'Istanbul'. in the airports, u will listen to the information in 2 or 3 languages (Greek, English, French). in Greek, u will never listen the word Istanbul. in the same way, if your ticket was in english, of course u read Istanbul! and the station signages are in two languages in Greece: english and greek. the name 'Istanbul' is not banned in Greece, lol! we just don't use it when we talk to other Greeks... we prefer the original one, the one we got used to... Hectorian 04:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

To isoterion-mou itan en Ellinika, kai ta simadia sto stathmo itan en Ellinika. (better Greek than mine, no doubt) Adam 08:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess the article will just have to say there are two theories and leave the reader to judge. Anyway I don't intend spending more time on this extremely esoteric question. Kali spera sas. Adam 11:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Adam, it would actually be good if you spent five more minutes on the article. We so far have no single source for your theory. Unless you come up with one, that sentence is likely to be removed in the future, and I think it would be a pity to leave the "to the city"-theory as the only suggested explanation. It may be silly, but it is backed up by Encyclopædia Britannica. Mlewan 11:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I do not know if it seems silly or not, but since it is backed up by Britannica and Columbia, there is no reason to exclude it. every theory is welcomed in wikipedia, as long as it has sources, and each theory should get the validity and interest it deserves. so far, there are two prominent theories regarding the city's name. if other theories come up someday, we will discuss it again. btw, i reverted the article back to Mlewan's version, since we are not talking just about a 'suggestion'. it is a fact, at least according to the verifiable sources provided (and Britannica is considered quite a 'strong' source!). Regards Hectorian 11:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I second Mlewan and Hectorian here. The view that Istanbul is from "Is tin Polin" is the only one I've ever read anywhere in the literature; whe have currently not the slightest indication that any other hypothesis has ever been proposed; the analogical evidence from the other "is-" placenames is nothing short of overwhelming; the hypothetical derivation directly from "Konstantinoupoli" would be highly irregular; that from "Is tin Polin" is linguistically straightforward and can be explained very simply sound by sound. I distinctly remember once reading in a serious linguistic publication that even the /a/ in the middle syllable may be quite regular, because the local Greek dialects at that time would have had "tan" instead of "tin" as the article, so that "is tan pol(i)" with a bit of northern vocalism and the usual sandhi assimilation around the /np/ would lead directly to the target form. Can't unfortunately now remember where I read that, it was years ago. In the absence of counter-proposals actually verified in the literature, I'd say this etymology as as good as any that was ever proposed for any word by any linguist. Sure, historical reconstruction isn't an exact science, but linguists know when to trust an etymology and when not to, and this one's straightforward for all I can see. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just to clarify:

...why the etymology is so regular
  • Semantically: everybody agrees Greeks were referring to the city as "Poli". The normal Turk on the streets (of medieval Asia Minor) would never have much opportunity of hearing "Konstantinople" anyway.
  • "(i)stin Poli" was the regular way of referring to the city in locative adverbials (both "to" and "in"). Locative adverbials are probably the most frequent syntactic context where placenames occur.
  • Turkish had no articles and no prepositions. A native Turkish speaker would therefore have difficulties analysing "istinpoli", when heard from a Greek speaker: they wouldn't expect grammatical morphemes to be at the beginning of the string, but at the end of it. Therefore, they would be prone to misconstrue the "(i)stin-" part as part of the name proper (and possibly the final "-i" as being not part of it).
  • There's no need for the hypothesis of Turkish adding the initial "i-" for phonotactic reasons. Remember that Greek itself was just shedding the initial "i-" (formal Greek "is tin", colloquial Greek "stin"). The later alternation between "Stambul" and "Istanbul" exactly reflects the alternation between "is tin" and "stin" that you'd have in Greek. (Just yesterday, I heard an expert on contact linguistics giving a seminar saying that if a language reproduces an alternation between two doublet forms from a source language, that's one of the clearest indicators that the forms are actually borrowed from that source.)
  • Other sounds involved:
    • the /a/ in "Istanbul": as stated above, I seem to remember there's a dialectological finding that local Greek might have had /a/ in the article "tan" (instead of "tin")
    • the /i/ in the beginning: Note how this /i/ conflicts with Turkish vowel harmony. Turks would never have invented an i in that position out of thin air, if it hadn't been in the source (Gr. "is-"). The derivation from "Konstantin-" doesn't offer an /i/ in that syllable.
    • the /b/ in "-bul": regular voicing assimilation, exactly taken over from Greek
    • the alternation between /n/ and /m/ in "(i)sta(n|m)bul": reflects the assimilation n>m in spoken Greek in that position
    • the /u/ in the final syllable: northern Greek dialects have a strong tendency to raise /o/ > /u/ in many words.
    • the loss of the final /i/: northern Greek dialects have a strong tendency to erase unstressed /i/ at the end of words.
  • Result: Perfect regularity, every single sound easily explainable.
Why the derivation from "Konstantinoupoli" doesn't work

That derivation requires:

  • the loss of "Kon-". No reason why exactly the most salient, initial syllable would get lost
  • the addition of prothetic "i-" to make the consonant cluster "st-" pronouncable. But why would Turkish speakers first cut off a syllable ("Kon-") in the first place, if that left them with a difficult-to-pronounce cluster at the cutoff point so that another syllable had to be added back? And why would they choose the least fitting vowel in terms of vowel harmony?
  • loss of "-tino-". No explanation.
  • voicing of "p" > "b". No explanation, because the "p" hadn't been in a voicing environment in Greek.
Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your thorough explanation. Perhaps the arguments should be added to the article itself, so people like Adam and myself, who were not convinced, are not tempted to change explanation again in the future. If you do so, I suggest you add a separate section for it, instead of listing all the details in the introduction. Mlewan 15:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd need to research this a bit to find references, otherwise it would be rather on the OR side, I'm afraid. I just intended it as an explanation here among editors. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested moves

[edit] (A) Move Etymology of Istanbul to Names of Istanbul

Rationale

This page is now doing a lot more than what its current title says it does. Instead of just presenting the linguistic derivation of the principal Turkish name "Istanbul", it actually discusses all the various names in all the languages involved. Which is fine, but it should be named accordingly, and the section that actually does the etymology-of-"Istanbul" thing should then be moved out of the intro into some place within the structure of the article. - Once this article has been cleaned up, we can hopefully also get a more solid consensus about what needs to be said in the lead of the main Istanbul article.

Support
  • as proposed by me: Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. —Khoikhoi 04:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support a move to Historic Names of Istanbul and Names of Istanbul.Baristarim 23:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Nowhere are we proposing to move the page to Present-day names of Istanbul or Modern names of Istanbul—just saying "names" doesn't mean they're used today. Also we can add a note of clarification at the top of the page if you want. —Khoikhoi 03:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Ok, fine by me.. :) Baristarim 23:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Current content of Etymology of Istanbul, mostly unrelated with Etymology. To move seems logical.But, on the other hand "Historical names of Istanbul" does not cover the Etymology and other present day-working names. Also "Names of Istanbul" does not make sense about Etymology, but seems more suitable.
    I offer 3 subtitle;
    1-Etymology(including two alternative oppinions;from Stinpoli and from Konstantinopoli)
    2-Current-Modern names used in different languages
    3-Historical names used in different languages(chronologically)
    sub-sub titles may be included if necessary.

Regards. Mustafa Akalp 05:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose
Discussion

[edit] (B) Redirect Tsargrad here

The discussion is at the talk page of Tsargrad.

[edit] Name trivia

The following was added to Constantinople by an anon user - I moved it here as it seemed like trivia in that article is more appropriate in this article? It may also be better in the article on Byzantium not sure. -- Stbalbach 16:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

There are also two traditions on the name Byzantium. The first one speaks of the city built between two "byzia" (literally meaning boobs) i.e. "wealty regions" Europe and Asia and it was called Byzantium because it was in the middle of two continents. The second one speaks of a Delphi omen saying to Vyzas "built your city close to the city of the blind". Vyzas searched for the "city of the blind", but there was no such city. When he saw the place where Byzantium was to be built he liked so much, that when he saw a city built in Asia accross the Byzantium location (Scoutari or Chrysoupoli) he said to the colonists that they should built their city there cause the "city of the blind" was in Asia already built by "blind" people unable to see the beauty of Byzantium's location.

Actually I think it belongs in Byzantium, I've moved this comment over to that talk page. -- Stbalbach 16:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dersaadet etc

Can anybody clarify if the alternative Ottoman names (Dersaadet, Bab-i Ali etc.) were really ever used as names for the city as such, or only as a metonymy for the Ottoman authorities located there, like English "Porte"? All three ("Gate of Felicity", "Sublime Porte", "Seat of the Throne") seem to be primarily locations within the Topkapi Palace. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:47, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] That 1930 "renaming"...

Okay, I've checked it. It's most certainly a big, well, let's say, inexactitude. Unfortunately it's one that Wikipedia seems to have done its share in perpetuating already.

There are dozens or hundreds of websites out there that talk of the city being "renamed" to Istanbul in 1930, and there are parallel claims that Ankara was "renamed" from "Angora" to Ankara at that time, and Izmir to Izmir etc.

Some of this is also perpetuated by sources like Britannica.

None of these works describes exactly what happened in 1930. What decision, made by whom, in what terms? Quotes? Cites? References? Nothing.

And none of these sources comments on the simple, obvious fact that Ottoman sources (official texts) prior to 1923 are full of just those names that allegedly were only introduced in 1930. "Ankara" (انقره), "Izmir" (ازمير), "Istanbul" (استانبول), they are all over the place. A few instances can easily be found, with PDF facsimiles, if you google for these names on "site:devletarsivleri.gov.tr".

In the case of Istanbul, matters are just a bit more complex because besides Istanbul, there were alternative equally "offical" names also in use, like "Dersaadet" and "Kostantiniyye" (the latter apparently less common than the former, in the late Ottoman era).

I checked the following sources:

  • Encyclopedia of Islam
  • its Turkish edition, İslam ansiklopedisi (2001)
  • Dünden bugüne İstanbul ansiklopedisi (1993)
  • Various pre-1930 dictionaries of Ottoman Turkish
  • Various histories of modern Turkey, among them Shaw/Shaw (1977) History of the Ottoman empire and modern Turkey; Robinson (1963) The First Turkish Republic.

I still haven't found out what exactly that decree or law or whatever that was apparently made on 28 March 1930 said and what its status was. The best I could find was a notice in Robinson (1963: 298), stating that "foreigners [were] asked to use Turkish geographical names"; and in Shaw/Shaw (1977: 386): "the use of Turkish in place of the foreign geographical names commonly in use [...] was urged on all foreign companies and embassies". Somewhere (I think it was in some Britannica page quoted on the web) it was also said that the Turkish Post office began in 1930 to refuse to deliver letters addressed to "Constantinople".

So, most likely: No "renaming" (obviously you can't "rename" something to a name it already has!), but merely a reaffirmation of the existing Turkish names, and an attempt to enforce their use in foreign languages. No change in Turkish usage itself. In the case of Istanbul, possibly combined with some act of deprecating the obsolete alternative official names such as Dersaadet, which may have held out in a few corners of bureaucratic officialese up to that point, but we don't really know that.

If Britannica thinks they can summarize that as "renaming to Istanbul", so much the worse for them, it's time we here at wikipedia get better than Britannica. Fut.Perf. ☼ 00:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

You do understand that one should be mainly researching about the usage of the English or internationally used names (e.g. in other widespread languages as French or German) of the periods in question and not the usage of the names used by Greeks-Ionians-Pontian-Christian-Ottoman-Young Turkic-Turkish-Muslim etc people during or after those periods (many times anachronistically) ... 195.93.21.73 12:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

I'm now proposing a large-scale rewrite, with more details based on the sources I mentioned, and a restructuring to fit the proposed move to Names of Istanbul (which we should finally go ahead with). Moving the "etymology of Istanbul" section out from the intro into a sequence first of the historical names used in Greek, Latin, Turkish (and their reflexes in English); then sections on historical names in other neighbouring languages, then a short passage on usage in the modern languages. Enjoy (hopefully). Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calque

The article says that Kostantiniyye (Arabic القسطنطينية, al-Qusṭanṭiniyah) are calqued forms. I'm hesitant to even touch what looks like a very good article, but I don't see the calque. Am I missing something? Jd2718 12:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I chose "calque" in the sense that Kostantin-iyye appears to be a composite linguistic expression created in analogy to Konstantino-polis, where the meaning 'place-of-Konstantine' has been re-created by means of Arabic morphology. I'd call it a calque rather than simply a loan, because it apparently involves the use of Arabic grammar (word-formation rules) to create something analogous to the Greek, not just a takeover of the Greek form as is. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick answer. I see what you are saying. Take another look at calque. I don't think that a change in ending really meets the definition. That being said, it comes pretty close, and again, the article as a whole is very strong. I hope that other editors think it over, and what they (you) decide, they decide. I will respect that and not make a change here. Regards. Jd2718 13:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
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