On 03/07/2004 00:07, Patrick Andries wrote:
Jony Rosenne a Ãcrit :
Two very different political realities (before and after 1453). Cities
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John H. Jenkins
Peking for BeÇjÄng. :-)
Or Constantinople for Istanbul. :-)
change names without going through transliterattions, cf. Berlin
(Ontario) becoming Kitchener in 1916.
But Constantinople -> Istanbul is not in fact this kind of name change, for Istanbul (that is, Ästanbul) is probably a corrupted and shortened version of Constantinople, with the initial I added to fit Turkish phonology (cf. the old western version Stamboul, still used in Russian, also Smyrna -> Izmir). (I have also heard it said that Istanbul comes from Greek EIS TÄN POLIN "to the city", but that seems less likely to me.) So the change is more like Beijing -> Peking than Berlin -> Kitchener. I guess another similar change would be Danzig -> Gdansk, but I don't know where the initial G came from so possibly the Polish form is older than the German.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
