When did Constantinople become Istanbul?

Beginning:

Turkey is one of the Arising 7 countries. The World Bank classifies Turkey as an upper-middle income country in terms of the country's per capita GDP. Istanbul is their most beautiful capital city.

Istanbul is located in north- western Turkey and straddles the strait Bosporus, which provides the only passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the ocean of Marmara.

One part of Istanbul lies in Europe and the other part lies in Asia. Istanbul's European part is separated from its Asian part by the Bosphorus strait, a 31- km-long raceway that connects the Black Sea with the ocean of Marmara, and forms a natural boundary between the two mainlands.

But today's Istanbul and hundreds of thousands of years ago Istanbul was the same? Today we will know about it briefly.

Few cities in the history of the world have been as important as Constantinople. Linking East and West, two empires have risen and fallen around this city, it has also been renamed several times: Byzantium, Zargrad, Miklagard and most famously Constantinople. But when was the name of Constantinople changed to Istanbul?

It was settled by the Greeks in the 7th century BC, then it was called Byzantium. Later its name was Latinized to Byzantium. Its name was changed several more times by the Romans: Augusta Antonina, Nova Roma (New Rome). Then came Emperor Constantine. He first chose Sardica (present-day Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria) as his capital, but later moved it to Byzantium, naming it Constantinople.

Constantine the Great, after whom the city is named; Image Source: Heavy Metal Classicist

The city was known by this name for the next thousand years, but some in the Roman Empire also called it Byzantium or 'He Polis (The City)'. On the other hand, the city was known as 'Konstantiniyye' to the Arabs outside the Byzantine Empire.

After the city of Constantinople was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1453, its two names spread, with documents mainly using Constantiniye (from the original Arabic), while the city was known to many residents as İstanbul.

Constantinople was the center of the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years; Image Source: hadynyah/Getty Images

This rivalry between Istanbul and Constantinople finally ended in 1876, when the official constitution changed its name to 'Istanbul'. However, the name Constantinople was used by other countries until World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Kemal Atatürk took the initiative to change it. In 1923, he urged other countries to call the city Istanbul, which was already being used by the Turkish people. But none of the European superpowers heeded the call, they continued with the old 'Constantinople'.

Fall of Byzantine Constantinople to the Ottomans; Image Source: Archeology News

Finally, when the United States started calling "Istanbul" in honor of Turkey's call, Turkey tried to make their claim important. In 1930 they passed a law which decided that any mail with 'Constantinople' written on it would no longer reach the recipient. Since then all the countries started calling the city as 'Istanbul'. Except for the Greeks, they still call the city 'Constantinople'.