page_title: Names of Istanbul
section_title: İstanbul
hierarchical_section_title: Names of Istanbul / Names in historical sequence / İstanbul
caption_attribution_description: العربية: خريطة لِتُركيَّا صدرت سنة 1927، حيثُ كانت تُكتب بالتُركيَّة العُثمانيَّة. English: 1927 Map of Turkey Français&#160;: Carte de Turquie de 1927 Türkçe: 1927 Türkiye Haritası
context_page_description: The city of Istanbul has been known by a number of different names. The most notable names besides the modern Turkish name are Byzantium, Constantinople, and Stamboul. Different names are associated with different phases of its history, with different languages, and with different portions of it.
context_section_description: The modern Turkish name İstanbul ([isˈtanbuɫ]) (Ottoman Turkish: استانبول‎) is attested (in a range of variants) since the 10th century, at first in Armenian and Arabic (without the initial İ-) and then in Ottoman sources. It derives from the Greek phrase "στην Πόλη" " [stimˈboli], meaning "in the city" or "to the city", reinterpreted as a single word; a similar case is Stimboli, Crete. It is thus based on the common Greek usage of referring to Constantinople simply as The City (see above).
  The incorporation of parts of articles and other particles into Greek place names was common even before the Ottoman period: Navarino for earlier Avarino, Satines for Athines, etc. Similar examples of modern Turkish place names derived from Greek in this fashion are İzmit, earlier İznikmit, from Greek Nicomedia, İznik from Greek Nicaea ([iz nikea]), Samsun (s'Amison from "se" and "Amisos"), and İstanköy for the Greek island Kos (from is tin Ko). The occurrence of the initial i- in these names, including Istanbul's, is largely secondary epenthesis to break up syllabic consonant clusters, prohibited by the phonotactic structure of Turkish, as seen in Turkish istasyon from French station or ızgara from the Greek schára.
  İstanbul originally was not used for the entire city and referred to the portion of Istanbul within the city walls. İstanbul was the common name for the city in normal speech in Turkish even before the conquest of 1453, but in official use by the Ottoman authorities other names, such as Kostantiniyye, were preferred in certain contexts. Thus, Kostantiniyye was used on coinage up to the late 17th and then again in the 19th century. The Ottoman chancery and courts used Kostantiniyye as part of intricate formulae in expressing the place of origin of formal documents, such as be-Makam-ı Darü's-Saltanat-ı Kostantiniyyetü'l-Mahrusâtü'l-Mahmiyye. In 19th century Turkish book-printing it was also used in the impressum of books, in contrast to the foreign use of Constantinople. At the same time, however, İstanbul too was part of the official language, for instance in the titles of the highest Ottoman military commander (İstanbul ağası) and the highest civil magistrate (İstanbul efendisi) of the city, and the Ottoman Turkish version of the Ottoman constitution of 1876 states that "The capital city of the Ottoman State is İstanbul". İstanbul and several other variant forms of the same name were also widely used in Ottoman literature and poetry.
  T. R. Ybarra of The New York Times wrote in 1929 that "'Istambul' (our usual form for the word is 'Stamboul') has always been the Turkish name for the whole of Constantinople". The Observer wrote that "To the Turks themselves it never was Constantinople, but Istanbul." In 1929 Lloyd's agents were informed that telegrams now must be addressed to "Istanbul" or "Stamboul", but The Times stated that mail could still be delivered to "Constantinople". However The New York Times stated that year that mail to "Constantinople" may no longer be delivered. In 1929 Turkish Nationalists advocated for the usage of Istanbul in English instead of Constantinople. The U.S. State Department began using "Istanbul" in May 1930.
  Names other than استانبول (İstanbul) had become obsolete in the Turkish language after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. However, at that point Constantinople was still used when writing the city's name in Latin script. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from the Arabic to the Latin script. Beginning in 1930, Turkey officially requested that other countries use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin script that had been used in the Ottoman times.
  In English the name is usually written "Istanbul". In modern Turkish the name is written "İstanbul" (dotted i/İ and dotless ı/I being two distinct letters in the Turkish alphabet).
caption: A 1927 map of Turkey, where the name İstanbul is used
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