Names
The city was originally founded as a Greek colony under the name of Byzantium in the 7th century BC. It took on the name of Konstantinoupolis ("city of Constantine", Constantinople) after its re-foundation under Roman emperor Constantine I, who transferred the imperial capital from its historic base, Rome, to Byzantium in 330 AD and designated his new capital "the New Rome." The modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin (εις την πόλιν), meaning "into the City" or "to the City". This name was used in Turkish alongside Kostantiniyye, the more formal adaptation of the original Constantinople, during the period of Ottoman rule, while western languages mostly continued to refer to the city as Constantinople until the early 20th century. After the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Turkish government began to formally object to the use of Constantinople in other languages and ask that others use the more common name for the city.
Read more about this topic: Constantinople
Famous quotes containing the word names:
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“I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)