bishop

[petegray]

>Ozerojdrvisee ("Lake Lake Lake").

There are many such examples, world wide, (e.g. in England, the river Avon)
but I've never met a three-fold one before.   Thanks!

>> <eis te:n polin> should already have been something like [is ti(m)
>> bolin], as in current Greek.  The vowels would be all wrong.

In the light of Renato's post, giving the evidence of =polis to Turkish -bul
in a different word, the only vowel that is wrong is the central one, which
we know was pronounced /A/ in that area in classical times.  Is there any
evidence of dialect variation within the later Koine?

>> And why
>> on earth would the Greeks have given something meaning 'to the city'
>> as the name of their capital?

To the three replies (immediately below) we should add Rome - the Romans
said said "the City" and expected everyone to know what they meant.  So
that's not a problem.

(a)> The capital was known as "i polis" the city for an extended period.
(b)> The study of toponyms is littered with such cases, cf. Scottish Gaelic >
     Gallaibh, Cataibh.
(c)> Yes, and the ancient Assyrians always referred to Assur as 'a:lum'
    "the city", but nobody else did.

>There is simply no need to derive Istanbul from any form of Greek 'polis'
>other than its original one: Konstantinopolis.  Anything else is an
>Occam's Razor violation.

It would be, if we were inventing the use of "city" for Konstnatinopolis.
But we aren't.

>...'eis te:n pslin' as the derivation of Istanbul .....the phonological
>difficulties,

Only one, the central vowel.

>there is no need to account for the prothetic vowel of Istanbul with a
>Greek form.

I believe that in modern Greek "to the" is simply /sti:n/ < /i:s ti:n/.  So
"to the city" would have been /sti:mbul/ at some stage.

Peter