Re: CHAT Stambul (was: A new version of Genesis)

Ray Brown wrote:
>
> On Sunday, June 13, 2004, at 06:26 , John Cowan wrote:
> [snip]
> > Still later, s- became perfectly fine: there is no synchronic evidence for
> > prefixing in French today -- as opposed to Spanish and Turkish, where it
> > is
> > very much alive (though it's i- in Turkish, as in I-stanbul < Stambul <
> > [Kon]stantinopoul[os]).
>
> Non, no - 'Stambul' is from northern Greek [stm='bul] = standard modern
> Greek [stim'boli]/stin poli/ = in the City/to the City.
>
> The Byzantine Greeks, I believe, habitually referred to the capital simply
> as "the City".
"In the City" seems a rather odd origin for the name of a city.  The
Konstaninopoulos theory seems better to me for that reason.

Reply