the inhabitants of istanbul call the city istanbul armenians of istanbul call that city kostandnupolis or simply k polis russians call that city stambul some muslim nations call it astambul but we all now that the name of the city is kostantinopolis as it was found by constantine and for years it was the capital of byzantine empire by the name kostantinopolis leningrad was petrograd peter peterburg saint petersburg but initially and finally it was and is sankt peterburg so my dear dobbs may be you read kartuli and now that georgians call their capital tbilisi it is tbilisi de fact and problably will always be but years ago that city was not called tbilisi and even years ago the majority of the inhabitants of the city who were not georgian but in fact armenian kept calling the city tiflis that city was very well known in the russian empire as the biggest industrial political and transportation center of transcaucasia under the name tiflis the residence of vice royal of caucasus you can open any map of russian empire and you will never see any single mention of the name tbilisi in any map published in that period so nobody is arguing that at the moment the city is called tbilisi but you also should not have any guts to call the nationalistic past of tbilisi mistifying the generation who used to live in the city named tiflis is still alive