Ed Ranks the Names of Istanbul

Ed Ranks Everything loves maps!

True, it was once "Constantinople." But it was also other things as well. These are the main ones.

7. Augusta Antonina - For a few years in the early 3rd Century, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus re-named the city after his son, Antoninus (this was done after Severus basically destroyed the city in 196 AD). Talk about nepotism. This name obviously didn't stick.

6. Kostantiniyye - This one sounds kind of dumb, but it linguistically makes sense.  This was just an Arabic loan translation of "Constantinople." The "ople" part of the latter name came from the Greek word "polis" (city).  But the Ottomans conquered the city and didn't want that Greek nonsense, so they replaced the "ople" with an "iyye" which was the Arabic version of "palace of," e.g. "Palace of Constantine." 

5. New Rome - Emperor Constantine himself wanted to name the city "New Rome," which is sort of lazy. In fairness, he did consider himself ruler of the "Roman Empire," so it would have made sense. I will say that it's sort of cool that he wasn't egotistical enough to name the city after himself. People did that later.

4. Istanbul - The current and modern Turkish name actually has its origins going back to the 10th Century, being a Greek/Armenian/Arabic bastardization of a term which essentially means "the city." Also pretty lazy, when you think about it. This is like playing SimCity and just naming your city "City."

Constantine could also CARRY ENTIRE CASTLES. Boss.

3. Constantinople - I mean this is a cool-sounding name and everything, but I can see why they did away with it. Too many syllables. Five syllables is at least two syllables too many for a city name if you want it to roll off the tongue. As basically explained in Kostantiniyye above, this obviously just means "City of Constantine."

2. Lygos - According to Pliny the Elder, this city was originally a Thracian settlement named "Lygos." And why would we not believe Pliny? What reason does he have to lie about this? This name is super Greek sounding.

1. Byzantium - This awesome-named city was founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC, but the name is believed to predate the Greeks to some Thracian or Illyrian king named Byzas (at least according to legend). The name stuck until Septimius Severus' siege over seven centuries later, after which it went through the names ranked #7 and #5 above, before setting on Constantinople.  Still, the name lived on much later with the "Byzantine Empire" period which reigned for 1000 years. Although admittedly, the Byzantine Empire was never actually called "Byzantine Empire" when it existed. It only retroactively got that name by historians afterwards.