Names of Istanbul

The name Byzantius and Byzantinus were applied from the 9th century to gold Byzantine coinage, reflected in the French besant d'or, Italian bisante, and English besant, byzant, or bezant. The English usage, derived from Old French besan pl. besanz, and relating to the coin, dates from the 12th century.

Later, the name Byzantium became common in the West to refer to the lit. 'kingdom of the Romans', had ceased to exist.

The city was called Augusta Antonina Greek: Αυγούστα Αντωνινή for a brief period in the 3rd century AD. The Roman Emperor Septimius Severus 193–211 conferred the name in honor of his son Antoninus, the later Emperor Caracalla.

Before the Roman emperor Constantine the Great filed the city the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire on May 11, 330, he undertook a major construction project, essentially rebuilding the city on a monumental scale, partly modeled after Rome. Names of this period referenced ἡ Νέα, δευτέρα Ῥώμη "the New,Rome", Alma Roma  Ἄλμα Ῥώμα, Βυζαντιάς Ῥώμη, ἑῴα Ῥώμη "Eastern Rome", Roma Constantinopolitana.: 354 

The Third Canon of the first Council of Constantinople 360 referred to the city as New Rome.

The term "New Rome" lent itself to East-West polemics, particularly in the context of the Great Schism, when it was used by Greek writers to stress the rivalry with the original Rome. New Rome is also still component of the official title of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Kōnstantinoúpolis Κωνσταντινούπολις, Constantinopolis in Latin and Constantinople in English, was the name by which the city became soon more widely known, in honor of Constantine the Great who determine it as his capital. It is number one attested in official usage under Emperor Theodosius II 408–450. It remained the principal official name of the city throughout the Byzantine period, and the most common name used for it in the West until the early 20th century. This name was also used including its Kostantiniyye variant by the Ottoman Empire until the advent of the Republic of Turkey.

According to Eldem Edhem, who wrote an encyclopedia everyone on Istanbul for Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, "many" Turkish members of the public as well as Turkish historians often perceive the ownership of Constantinople for the Ottoman city, despite being historically accurate, as being "politically incorrect".

Besides Constantinople, the Byzantines referred to the city with a large range of honorary appellations, such(a) as the "Queen of Cities" Βασιλὶς τῶν πόλεων, also as an adjective, Βασιλεύουσα, the 'Reigning City'. In popular speech, the most common way of referring to it came to be simply the City Greek: hē Polis , ἡ Πόλις, . This usage, still current today in colloquial Greek and Armenian Պոլիս, pronounced "Polis" or "Bolis" in the Western Armenian dialect prevalent in the city, also became the mention of the later Turkish name, Istanbul see below.

Kostantiniyye Arabic: قسطنطنية, translit. Qusṭanṭinīyya, Persian: قسطنطنیه, translit. Qosṭanṭanīye, Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطينيه, translit. Ḳosṭanṭīnīye is the name by which the city came to be known in the Islamic world. it is for an Arabic calque of Constantinople. After the

The advanced Turkish name İstanbul pronounced  , meaning "in the city", reinterpreted as a single word; a similar issue is Stimboli, Crete. it is thus based on the common Greek usage of referring to Constantinople simply as The City see above.

The incorporation of parts of articles and other particles into Greek place names was common even before the Ottoman period: Navarino for earlier Avarino, Satines for Athines, etc. Similar examples of modern Turkish place names derived from Greek in this fashion are İzmit, earlier İznikmit, from Greek Nicomedia, İznik from Greek Nicaea [iz nikea], Samsun s'Amison from "se" and "Amisos", and İstanköy for the Greek island Kos from is tin Ko. The occurrence of the initial i- in these names, including Istanbul's, is largely secondary epenthesis to break up syllabic consonant clusters, prohibited by the phonotactic ordering of Turkish, as seen in Turkish istasyon from French station or ızgara from the Greek schára.

İstanbul originally was non used for the entire city and referred to the portion of Istanbul within the city walls. İstanbul was the common name for the city in normal speech in Turkish even previously the conquest of 1453,[] but in official use by the Ottoman authorities other names, such(a) as Kostantiniyye, were preferred incontexts. Thus, Kostantiniyye was used on coinage up to the late 17th and then again in the 19th century. The Ottoman chancery and courts used Kostantiniyye as element of intricate formulae in expressing the place of origin of formal documents, such(a) as be-Makam-ı Darü's-Saltanat-ı Kostantiniyyetü'l-Mahrusâtü'l-Mahmiyye. In 19th century Turkish book-printing it was also used in the impressum of books, in contrast to the foreign use of Constantinople. At the same time, however, İstanbul too was part of the official language, for interpreter in the titles of the highest Ottoman military commander İstanbul ağası and the highest civil magistrate İstanbul efendisi of the city,[] and the Ottoman Turkish report of the Ottoman constitution of 1876 states that "The capital city of the Ottoman State is İstanbul". İstanbul and several other variant forms of the same name were also widely used in Ottoman literature and poetry.

T. R. Ybarra of Lloyd's agents were informed that telegrams now must be addressed to "Istanbul" or "Stamboul", but The Times stated that mail could still be presentation to "Constantinople". However The New York Times stated that year that mail to "Constantinople" may no longer be delivered. In 1929, Turkish nationalists advocated for the use of Istanbul in English instead of Constantinople. The U.S. State Department began using "Istanbul" in May 1930.

Names other than استانبول İstanbul had become obsolete in the Turkish language after the imposing of the Republic of Turkey. However, at that point Constantinople was still used when writing the city's name in Latin script. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from the Arabic to the Latin script. Beginning in 1930, Turkey officially requested that other countries use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin code that had been used in the Ottoman times.

In English, the name is ordinarily written "Istanbul". In modern Turkish, the name is solution "İstanbul" dotted i/İ and dotless ı/I being two distinct letters in the Turkish alphabet.

Stamboul or Stambul is a variant form of İstanbul. Like Istanbul itself, forms without the initial i- are attested from early on in the Middle Ages, first in Arabic guidance of the 10th century and Armenian ones of the 12th. Some early control also attest to an even shorter form Bulin, based on the Greek word Polin alone without the preceding article. This latter form lives on in modern Armenian. The word-initial i- arose in the Turkish name as an epenthetic vowel to break up the St- consonant cluster, prohibited in Turkish phonotactics.

Stamboul was used in Western languages to refer to the central city, as Istanbul did in Turkish, until the time it was replaced by the official new usage of the Turkish form in the 1930s for the entire city. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western European and American sources often used Constantinople to refer to the metropolis as a whole, but Stamboul to refer to the central parts located on the historic peninsula, i.e. Byzantine-era Constantinople inside the walls.

The name Islambol اسلامبول lit. 'full of Islam' appeared after the Ottoman conquest of 1453 to express the city's new role as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It was first attested shortly after the conquest, and its invention was ascribed by some contemporary writers to Sultan Mehmed II himself. Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, most notably Evliya Çelebi, describe it as the common Turkish name of the time. Between the slow 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word "Islambol" on coinage was in 1730 during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I. The term Kostantiniyye still appeared, however, into the 20th century.

Ottomans and foreign contemporaries, particularly in diplomatic correspondence, referred to the Ottoman imperial government with particular honorifics. Among them are the following:

The "Gate of Felicity", the "Sublime Gate", and the "Sublime Porte" were literally places within the Ottoman Sultans' ]