On 06/07/2004 13:05, Patrick Andries wrote:
Patrick Andries a Ãcrit :
So the change is more like Beijing -> Peking than Berlin -> Kitchener.
Without a political change Constantinople would not have changed name in a matter of days (at least as far as the officials were concerned). In any case, it is not a transliteration problem (Beijing --> PÃkin).
Well, did Gdansk/Danzig change its name backwards and forwards several times over history (thank you, Qrczak, for the interesting information about that), or was it simply that it had different names in different languages? This makes it not a transliteration problem but a translation problem, one which is common to many geographical names - sometimes the names in different languages are related, and sometimes they are not e.g. Turku/Ãbo in Finland, or Yerushalayim/al-Quds, or Dublin/(I'll let Michael tell us the correct Irish form).
[PA] I wrote this a bit too fast this morning (first message !). I believe the origin of Istanbul is a bit too obscure to decide whether it is due to a transcription or a complete name change. Just to confuse things further Konstantaniye was apparently used by the Turkish administration and a Greek form Istimboli is attested in the XIVth century.
Thanks for this. The matter is indeed not so simple.
P. .A
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
