American journal of philology Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. The Derivation Of Stamboul. It has become a commonplace that Stamboul or Istamboul, the modern Turkish name for Constantinople, is a corruption of fir... more » 1-171- n-oXiv; but, like many of our commonplaces, this derivation has been questioned and in some cases discarded by. men whose opinions carry weight. The earliest mention of it that I know is to be found in Ducange, textit{Gloss, ad Scriptores Med. ct Infimae Graecitatis (1687), under the word miXir, where he says, following the " Grainmatica Linguae Graecae vulgaris inedita " of Romanus Nicephorus:' " [VoXis] Sola Constantinopolis a Graecis hodie ap- pellatur per excellentiam, cum urbes caeteras omnes textit{Kaarpa vocare soleant. Unde accidit ut ex arijv n-oXiv quomodo vulgus dicere amabat, cum Byzantium proficiscebantur, aut de hac urbe loque- bantur, Turci fecerint Dorice Srci/woX, mutato ij in a." For this simple and plausible explanation some modern scholars have attempted to substitute two others. Egli (Nomina Geographica: Leipzig, 1872) in his article on Constantinople says : " Der oriental, (-tiirk.) name textit{Stambul ist eine verstiimmelung von textit{islam = recht- glaiibig und /5/=menge oder vielheit." He expresses no doubt in the matter, and quotes no evidence except the circulation in Georgia of coins which were struck in Constantinople and which have textit{islambul inscribed upon them. But the most triumphant assault upon the old derivation is in the article on Constantinople in Ersch and Gruber, 83 Theil (Leipzig, 1885), written by G. Rosen. I quote the whole of it for the sake of what will follow : " Stambul, wie wir seit einem Jahr- hundert jahraus jahrein von jedem Reisebeschreiber, der die Tertia 1 Ducange's Index Auctorum tells us that Komanus Nicephorus came from Thessalonica, lived in Fra...« less