Talk:Names of Istanbul/Archive 1

message: I really, really wonder if a separate page for this is necessary. It seems absolutely silly to me, as—whatever arguments might crop up on Istanbul's etymology section—they can certainly be resolved there. Don't you think? —Saposcat 20:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why? 

message: Do we really need all the names in all the languages listed in the very first sentence of the article? Purely stylistically too much clutter. I would restructure the first sentence, leaving perhaps Old Church Slavonic or "Old Chruch Slavonic" there only and saying that written and sounds similarly in other Slavic languages. Later in the text, we could list all names if necessary. I just want to suggest this first, to see if anyone objects. I know striking down names in languages often touch very many raw nerves, and I do it without proposing only when I am absolutely positive that doing so is better for the article. Objections to this change? If anyone wants to do it, you're welcome of course. --Irpen 05:33, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
    Support. --Ghirlandajo 08:25, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  All these names in the first sentence? 

message: Okay, for a page entitled Istanbul (etymology), there's a lot of talking about things that have nothing to do with the etymology of the word Istanbul (except for the last section, which was brought over direct from Istanbul#Etymology).  If this is what the goal of the page is wanting to be, it should be moved to something like Names of Istanbul or some such.  —Muke Tever talk 01:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page content doesn't match title 

message: "Byzantine writers contrasted with Byzantium (pagan roots) as (Constantinople) had always been a Christian city. Polemical writings after the Great Schism even claimed that Old Rome was too stained by the blood of martyrs to lead Christianity."
I think this needs an edit... in places it's obscure and in others it's just plain difficult to comprehend. I'll have a (probably careless and error-ridden) bash at amending it... please can the learned ones watch carefully for my stupidity and amend, but without reinstating the existing difficulties in new form? Thanks. --Dweller 09:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek section 

message: I am quite surprised that everyone contributing to this article has missed the real point as to the etymology of the word Istanbul. I know both Greek and Turkish, and as someone who is specially interested in ancient forms of Turkish/Turkic it seems to me so obvious that Istanbul isn't derived from the Greek "i-stin-poli". As most people here have mentioned, that phrase means "to the city" and was used at the time in the form, for example "i am going to the city - pao stin poli". If this was to be converted in the form of a name, it would have been "I-poli", remember the city called Tripoli (no "stin") or as suggested by someone else "i-Smyrni", Turkish being "I-zmir" (again no "stin" although the same format would have applied as "pao stin Smyrni). 
When we separate Istanbul into its two components, "Istan" and "Bul", it makes more sense. As most of you will notice, "Istan" is usually used as a suffix in many country names such as Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (no need to mention that these countries still speak forms of Turkic that is understandable to a Turkish person) etc... "Istan" originally means "country" or "land" in ancient Turkish. Also "Bul" is still used in modern Turkish in the meaning "to find". Therefore, it would be perfectly correct to say that Istanbul is a Turkic word meaning "the found land". The other suggestions are not etymologically correct.
regards,
HK
:If this was the true etymology, it would be 'Bul-istan' like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgistan etc. "i-stin-poli" does not only mean "to the city" but also "in the city". Apropos, u wrote it wrong... it is not "i-stin-poli" but "is-tin-poli" (εις την Πόλη). btw, "-stan" is a persian suffix, not a turkic one. the etymology from the greek phrase is perfectly explained by the linguistic changes and historical reasons (id est that the city was usually just called 'Πόλη' (simply 'City')-and still is in Greece). The other etymology 'Islam+bol' also is fake since the name 'Istanbul' can neither be linguisticaly explained as coming from this (-la- cannot be transformed in -ta-) nor historically explained (Turks called the city 'Istanbul' before 1453, when the city had no muslim population at all! so, u can't name a city 'plenty of Islam', when no muslim is present there. Regards --Hectorian 18:49, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Istan + Bul, the Found Land 

message: ;...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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: You may be thinking of konak 'dwelling', but I don't think kon alone would carry any meaning. Any in any case, it's idle speculation; as has been pointed out numerous times the consensus in the relevant literature is crystal clear and there's not the slightest reason why we should start speculating on our own here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indulge a non-linguist for a tic. Please explain why the two following examples don't take the force from your points above under "Why the derivation from "Konstantinoupoli" doesn't work". 1) Apparently the Greek city of Nicomedia is now İzmit. Hey, where'd the all-important first two entire syllables, "Nico-", go? And don't try and tell me that the Greeks used to go around saying "is tin 'media" and then started to leave out the "tin" just for fun. It seems to me that if the Turks could surgically extract "mit" from the dead center of "Nicomedia" and slap an "Iz-" in front of it and call it a city name, they could certainly extract "stan-ple" from "Constantinople" and slap an "Is-" in front of it. 2) As for the "p > b" issue, the city of "Claudiopolis" is now apparently "Bolu". Same thing, no? I'm new to this site so I apologize if my format here is wrong. AG, 3 March 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.106.38.143 (talk) 19:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, welcome to Wikipedia, and no problem about forcing the discussion. :-) I'm not terribly well informed about the Nicomedia case, but at least, Nico-media is actually a compound with a juncture at that point, in Greek, so yep, I wouldn't put it past the Greeks that they might have been the culprits in that case. Similarly for "Bolu"; that one really looks as if it was a doublet, yet another case where Greeks had been just referring to "poli". Note that p>b would have occurred in Greek in that case too, when preceded by an accusative article. The point is: you would get the p>b softening only if the word had been cut up at that point already by Greeks, because it was in their language that the relevant assimilation rule was active. -- But anyway, whatever it may be - it's not for us to decide and all the discussion and speculation we're engaging in here is just a pleasant but futile way of passing our time. Your speculations or mine are not supposed to go into the article (see "no original research" policy); we're just supposed to report what the literature says. And, I repeat, the literature is unanimous with respect to Istanbul. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: William Miller, "The Name of Navarino", The English Historical Review 20:78 (Apr., 1905), pp. 307-309JSTOR
These articles point out that the merging of part of the article with the placename was also common before the Ottoman period. Peculiarly, in the case of Navarino, it starts as Avarino, becomes Navarino in Greek, and then Anavarin in Turkish, with no phonotactic motivation in Greek, Venetian, or Turkish for the "a". 
Judging from the Google Books snippet, there seems to be some discussion of this in Beiträge zur Namenforschung, ed Ernst Dickenmann, but I don't have access to the book. --Macrakis 21:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I have heard a theory (admittedly in a dodgy TV channel) which I don't know if it holds ground. The old pronunciation of την was ten and some populations like the Pontians (see Pontic language) had maintained their ancient pronunciation, so what the Ottomans actually heard when they first contacted the Greeks was "istenpoli". --   Avg    04:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just to clarify: 

message: Interesting article:"Edward G. Bourne, "The Derivation of Stamboul", American journal of philology 8:1:78 (1887)JSTOR
The alteration of Abarinos into Navarino follows, of course, the
usual Greek habit of prefixing to the medieval name the last
letter of the accusative of the article.  Thus eis ton Avarinon
becomes Navarinon, just as eis tin Polis becomes Stambul, eis tas
Athinas Satines or Sathines, eis tas Thivas Estives.
:William Miller, "The Name of Navarino", The English Historical Review 20:78 (Apr., 1905), pp. 307-309JSTOR
These articles point out that the merging of part of the article with the placename was also common before the Ottoman period. Peculiarly, in the case of Navarino, it starts as Avarino, becomes Navarino in Greek, and then Anavarin in Turkish, with no phonotactic motivation in Greek, Venetian, or Turkish for the "a". 
Judging from the Google Books snippet, there seems to be some discussion of this in Beiträge zur Namenforschung, ed Ernst Dickenmann, but I don't have access to the book. --Macrakis 21:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have heard a theory (admittedly in a dodgy TV channel) which I don't know if it holds ground. The old pronunciation of την was ten and some populations like the Pontians (see Pontic language) had maintained their ancient pronunciation, so what the Ottomans actually heard when they first contacted the Greeks was "istenpoli". --   Avg    04:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: More on (I)stambul

message: ===(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)
thread_title:  Requested moves 

message: ;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)
thread_title: (A) Move [[Etymology of Istanbul]] to [[Names of Istanbul]]

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Name trivia 

message: 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)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure that it refers to the imperial government and not the city. Earksiinni (talk) 20:51, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dersaadet etc 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  That 1930 "renaming"... 

message: 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)
replies: text: Thanks! This is a very informative and well-done article now. --Delirium 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Calque 

message: Article currently says that Constantine first called it "Secunda Roma".  But Georgacas (see biblio.) say that he ordered it to be called Νέα Ρώμη (citing Socrates, Hist. eccl. 1.16).  Georgacas also says it was called Νέα Ρώμη starting in the 4th, not the 5th century.  Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? --Macrakis 23:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I suppose I had that from the Turkish encyclopedia I was consulting, but that one was not particularly reliable about the Roman/Greek side (the author evidently knew neither of these languages). Feel free to correct it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secunda ''vs.'' Nova Roma 

message: Is this a made up word, because I have seen it before but its not in the article. Tourskin 04:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constantinopolis 

message: ًWhat about the "AlAsitana[h]" الأستانة, a name by which the city is known in many historical Arabic sources; where did that come from? --Alif (talk) 17:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  AlAsitanah 

message: Istanbul  name  comes  from  Turkish  Roots.  I won't  say too  much, just  will  explain  the Turkish  roots.  There  are  2  words: ASTANA  and  BALIQ.  ASTANA  means  royal and  also  heavenly. Pure Turkish word.  During  Ottoman  Empire  it is called  as  "Asitane" and  Ottoman  highness did say "ASITANE" for ISTANBUL. And  BALIQ  or BALIGH  means  "CITY" ,  it  is  also  pure  Turkish  word. 
ASTANA-BALIQ or  if  you  say in  Turkish ASTANA-BALIGH  (  we have a special  latter  and sound  for  "GH"  and  people  from other  cultures  have  great  difficulty with  that  sound).
Now just  analyze  it  you  are the conquereor nation  and  say  "ASTANA - BALIGH"  it  is  natural  that  other  nations will also accept and  try to say  this. But  they  can't  say  some  letters  and will deform  it. So it  comes  to ASTANA-BALIK  then ASTANBALIK  then ASTANBAL and  then  ISTANBAL. It  is  clear  that  during  10th  century  a Turkish historian  "MESUDI" says that  Turks  says "ASTEN-BULEN"  to  Istanbul  in  his  book "Efembih Vellishref". 
( By  the  way  against  the  idea  "Turks  just deformed  Greek  place  names :  There  is a city  in Anatolia  "Balikesir ;  its  origin name  is  Balik-hisar, means  "City  of  Castle"  and  pure  Turkish" also  "Greek foods" :)  Dolma  and  Sarma  comes from Turkish  respectively  comes  from "to  fill"  and "to wrap" ) I have told  these, because there  is 2  cultures  and  each  cultured  received  something  from  each other. Of  course  we ( Turks )  got  something  from  Greeks  and  also Greeks  got something  from  us. The  other  ideas  are  nonsense  or  racist  ideas.
:Unsourced amateur speculation. Please note that we will include only material that is referenced to reputable academic sources. Your personal guesswork has no place here, sorry. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are welcome to your opinion, but we have certain policies here. Please check WP:V and WP:RS. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

text: Sorry for any unjustified skepticism, but does this theory really come from non-politicized linguistics, or does it only come from 1930's-style extreme Turkish hypernationalism (such as gave us the Sun Language Theory)? AnonMoos (talk) 11:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Up to now we don't know of any place this "theory" comes from, besides Mseyis' own imagination. Al-Masudi and Ibn Battuta are primary sources and as such not suitable as references for an etymological hypothesis. Of course, if there are some interesting name forms attested in those authors that we aren't yet dealing with, such as Al-Asitanah, that may warrant inclusion, but we must strictly abstain from speculation about any etymological connections as long as those are not sourced to reliable modern linguistic sources. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

text: Mseyis, it is one of the fundamental principles of this project that we are not here to develop and promote our own ideas. We are here only to summarise what the academic literature says. You are welcome to your opinion that the academic literature is wrong, but we will stick with it nevertheless, no matter what you say. If you want to convince the world of something new, you are very welcome to try and do so - but just not on this website. (see Wikipedia:No original research.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:33, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another  approach  from Turkish Roots 

message: Hi there. There are some things about this term that puzzle me. It says in the article that it has become archaic in Serbian, Russian, Croatian, and Macedonian while it is used in Slovenian to refer to the historical city, but apparently also sometimes for the modern city. Now, I know for a fact that in Croatian terms Carigrad and also Konstantinopol are used exclusively for the historical city, former both for the Byzantine and Ottoman period, the latter solely for Byzantine times. I am not 100% sure, but it is safe to assume that it is the same in Serbian and Bosnian and very likely all other Slavic languages mentioned in the article. It is of course true that the term Carigrad for the contemporary city in Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian is obsolete and it is always referred to as Istanbul, but now comes the tricky part. The fact is that historically, that is in Ottoman times, in South Slavic lands the city was known as Stambol (duh!). I don't recall encountering Carigrad in, say, epic poetry (I could be wrong, of course, I'm not consulting any texts, I'm writing from my head, and I more than welcome any suggestions). But the fact is that Istanbul (in its archaic form) was well known and widely (if not solely) used in times for which the modern language uses the term Carigrad. There is, of course, no doubt that Carigrad is an ancient Slavic term, likely originating from the very first contacts of Slavs with the Byzantine Empire, but for what it seems to me it run out of use by the times of Turkish conquests. So, my educated guess is that the term Carigrad was reinvented during the Illyrian revival in mid 19th century, when everything that sounds ancient and Slavic was popular. Any thoughts? Zhelja (talk) 01:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carigrad 

message: About these  reverts: 
Raymond Janin was a reputed scholar with specialized publications on the history of Constantinople and the history of Thracia. His book cited, , is most certainly a reliable source.
Janin says: [10]"On a trouvé à la Pointe du Sérail [...] de nombreux débris de céramique protocorinthienne. Il y avait là un centre qui semble correspondre au Lygos dont parle Pline l'Ancien [...] Les populations qui habitaient les rives du Posphore étaient thraces, au dire des historiens. Thraces sont les noms de leurs villes et de leurs sites: Bosphore, Byzance, Mucaporis, etc. Thraces étaient les divinités qu'ils vénéraient. [...][11] En réalité le mot Byzance est d'origine thrace et n'a rien de mégarien. Il faut le rapprocher des autres noms thraces, Βυζία, Βύζηρες, Βυζαντίς, et du nom de Barbyzès (Βαρβύζης). Il a donc été donné avant l'arrivée des Grecs. Ceux-ci, en s'installant dans la petite cité thrace, n'ont pu faire disparaître complètement l'ancien état des choses. Ils ont dû composer avec l'élément indigène." Thus, he clearly confirms: (a) that the inhabitants of the place before the Megarian colonization were Thracians, (b) that Lygos was a Thracian settlement ("la petite cité thrace" refers back to "un centre qui semble correspondre au Lygos" a few lines further up); and (c) that the placenames in the region, in general, were Thracian (even though he doesn't explicitly mentions Lygos again in that sentence, the scope of the sentence is clearly such that it includes the place he just mentioned in the preceding sentence.)
In contrast, Scarlatos Byzantios, from 1851(!), is most certainly not a reliable source. We have no indication that this person knew anything about modern linguistics, which at that time was a new, developing science, and he could not possibly have known anything about Thracian placename etymologies, because the foundational linguistic works in that field were only written much later. The identification of the Lygos placename with the homonymous Greek plant name is evidently nothing but a naive folk etymology. Calling this author reliable simply because he was "a Greek scholar who lived there"  is outrageous, even for Euzen's standards. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I got news for you, Future:  Prof. Erendiz ÖZBAYOGLU claims that she knows better than the French priest. (E Y Ü P S U L T A N S Y M P O S I A I - V I I I : S E L E C T E D A R T I C L E S p. 221.) She says that the word Lygos is of the same origin with other toponyms such as Lygii, Ligures and Lugdunum and refers to the swampy region. She is not supposed to know the Greek towns of Ligourion, Lygia etc, common toponyms. She also sums various opinions on the origin of the name Byzantium, including the byssos (depth of sea, abyss) found in Homer. She doesn't say anything about Thracean settlement, since there are no archaeological evidences on the first settlers (stating the obvious, i.e. Thracean is the one who settles in Thrace, is not enough to make an author "reliable"). 
The etymology of Byzantium from Byzas and this from the nympgh Bizye is also found in this publication. For those who want to search more, look up in Pokorny's IE Etymological Dictionary for Root / lemma: b(e)u-2, bh(e)ū̆- (to swell, puff) which is the origin of the Gr. βυζί(ον) (breast). Bizye was the nymph who fed Byzas.
I trust your expertise to incorporate this info in the article. The opinion of Sc. Byzantios can also be added as "according to". Some will find interesting the scenario that a "thracean" settlement may have a Greek name. --Euzen (talk) 18:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Oh dear. And you think the Özbayoğlu article contradicts Janin or Georgacas? Read again. You don't really understand much about placename etymologies, do you? Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  A short excerpt from the erudite paper of Prof. ÖZBAYOGLU cited above (page 5) "...In Rome, at the end of the 3rd century, Kosmas and Damianos, two Muslim doctors who died for Islam were recognized anargyroi, “moneyless” saints because they treated gratis their patients. The church, which was constructed during the time of Theodosius, in the middle of the 5th century" (italics is mine). What does it mean? Who wrote this crap? I think that the Rev. Raymond Janin is twisting in his tomb... Alex2006 (talk) 19:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Heh, LOL. Quite a gaffe, indeed. No, it's not a particularly good article. The etymology stuff she mentions comes nowhere close to the depth of even the Georgacas paper from 1947. Fut.Perf. ☼
For certain users no source is too irrelevant if  supports that something is non-Greek. On the other hand, everything counts as a source if  supports that something is Albanian.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Euzen (talk • contribs) 10:04, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem here is not relevancy, but rather reliability. A source that pretends that two christian Saints were "Muslim Doctors who died for Islam" a couple of hundred years before the birth of Mohammed can be used with some success as inspiration for an alternate history novel, but not more than that. Alex2006 (talk) 13:23, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Actually I was thinking also the same. Ok, mistaking Theodosius for Theodosius II is a mistake, but the story about the Saints of Islam is just crazy. Anyway, this is not the first time that I read something fool on a Turkish paper. On the Catalog of the great (and beautiful) exhibition held in Istanbul in 2010 about the city, the most distinguished Turkish Art Historian of the last decades wrote that Istanbul is the only modern city which has kept the ancient walls intact... As Roman, I could only laugh :-) anyway, I will read the new article in the next days, thanks! Alex2006 (talk) 16:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Lygos" etymology 

message: Just changed the Persian/Arabic spelling of the city, both of them have the same transliteration. Some information is mentioned in the edit summary. My edits are being examined by my mentor  Alexis Ivanov (talk) 06:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrected the transliteration 

message: It should be pointed out that "Junshitandingbao" is the Mandarin pronunciation of 君士坦丁堡, but not the only way to read it. Given that "君" sounds like "kun" in Cantonese, it's probably closer to what the translator intended to sound like. Ahyangyi (talk) 14:04, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Junshitandingbao 君士坦丁堡" 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Names of Istanbul. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20170101063545/http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm to http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:42, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified