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Oh, great, mav, now I gots to put on a nother flag sez the grammar's all screwed up, too??
Well, maybe I won't take their word for it.
But wait, they can sell me a book sez they're right! I *gots to bleeve them!
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maybe I won't take their word for it.
join the club - see page 4!
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I too thought Istanbul was from the eis... phrase, but the Constantinople origin is fine by me. The change exhibits a number of features common to Modern Greek: loss of initial syllable (e.g. vrisko from ancient heurisko:), voicing of voiceless stops after a nasal, and (in the older form Stamboul) assimilation of the nasal. In Modern Greek ton polis is pronounced tom bolis.
The initial I (with a dot on it) is Turkish, which does not tolerate some initial clusters, and uses the i to make them pronounceable: so 'sterling' is isterlin.
Afterthought.
If Persian ostan (which by the way is the name of some of the internal divisions of Iran) is from the IE root 'stand' then it's probably related to state, from the Latin, and to the English stead 'place' as in homestead, bedstead, Hampstead, instead, and steadfast.
In German, Staat 'state' is presumably from Latin while Stadt 'city' is the native Germanic reflex, corresponding to English stead and Icelandic -stadhur.
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the Constantinople origin is fine by NicholasW.
Some interesting comments, NW. I am relatively ignorant of the linguistic history of the region, but might wonder if the sound changes in Greek have that much influence, here. Turkish I'll buy readily, but, given my ignorance, perhaps too readily. Would you care to shine the flashlight of linguistics on the footprints of this poor Fool's ignorance?
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Well I don't know the history of mediaeval Greek, but I'm guessing that the classical Greek name Konstantinopolis had changed to Stanbul in the Greek of 1453. The Turks then adopted this unchanged except for their insertion of the epenthetic i, and it has not changed in Turkish since.
The form 'Stamboul' formerly seen sometimes in English suggests the assimilation of nb to mb took place later in Greek, because if it was already Stambul in 1453 it would have been adopted as Istambul into Turkish. The Turkish cluster nb only makes sense if that's what it was when they borrowed it.
Now losing an initial syllable is easy, and so is dropping an ending. What remains is to explain how Stantinopol became Stanbul.
(Note names like Stavropol in Crimea, which to me looks obviously Greek, with loss of the ending. Was it a Greek colony conquered by the Russians at a time when -polis had become -pol?)
We stress the -NOP- but the loss of the -O- shows the stress was elsewhere in the Greek. Stantinopol became Stantinpol, perhaps losing two unstressed syllables to become Stantnpol. Obviously that awkward cluster -ntn- would reduce, giving Stanpol.
The voicing change giving Stanbol is a regular feature of modern Greek, and this shows it had already taken place by 1453.
Then I award myself one free sound change to get the u. Of course I'm making all this up as I go along, but it's a consistent story that fits all the facts I know. I expect something like this happened.
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Of course I'm making all this up as I go along, but it's a consistent story that fits all the facts I know.
Hey, sounds good to me. Might even eject that other one from my junk drawer. And I gots no probs with that o ==> u.
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If St. Botolf's Town can become Boston anything's possible!
TEd
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If St. Botolf's Town can become Boston
Or Eboracum York.
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Or Eboracum York.Or Lutetia Paris. 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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