How Roman Cities got their Modern Names 

Cádiz isn't a Roman city name but a Phonecian one.

You should mention the great Roman city of Emona that is today Ljubljana the capital of Slovenia.

​@ezekielbrockmann114 For your information:🔴 The Phoenicians are Canaanite peoples, and the Canaanites are ancient Arab peoples.

Mistake: Valencia in Spain was Valentium

do you think if the roman empire somehow held together to modern era we could have been 1000 years more advanced?

Makes sense, the Ottomans wanted to be seen as Rome's inheritors after all.

In the grand bazar I was looking for souvenir t-shirt with the name of Constantinople or Konstantiniyye but I failed. The merchants just acted odd when asked about it

Pronouncing Constantinople is literally torture in Turkish as it lacks any kind of vowel harmony so Ottoman had to soften it to Konstantiniyye as soon as they captured it. Although even Greeks weren't bothering to pronounce Constantinople rather kept using different names including ''polin'' simply meaning city. Ottoman mostly used original names with slight altering for centuries, the real change happened after republic era. During Turkish language reforms pretty much all city names were changed to add them vowel harmony. Same happened to all borrowed words in Turkish, if foreign words could be altered to become compatible with Turkish grammar they were changed accordingly. While if not they were phased out and at the end Turkish became softest Turkic language with pretty much all words having vowel harmony.

I read somewhere years ago, and I don't remember where and I have no idea if it's true, but apparently by the time the Turks conquered Constantinople, the local Greek-speaking people were using the slang short form of "Stampol", which is the origin of "Istambul".

@@Alex_PlanteI’ve heard it too, and the slang name came from Greek eis ten Polin “to the City”, as in “You going to the city?” “Yep, to the City”, eistinpolin > istanbul

Hayrabolu

Does “Anadolu Efes” mean “anatolic Ephesus”? Because the translation just says anadolu efes in Greek letters.

yes ​@@Stef77777

@@Kadir-lq5rz thank you

@@Stef77777 Anadolu = Anatolia. Name of the team. Also name of the holding that owns the team. Efes = Ephesos. Name of the team's sponsor, Efes beer company. Named after the city of Efes/Ephesos

Depends on the ethnic groups having conquered the place over that time.

"We don't know the exact origin of the name but it bears a high resemblance to the word knee-jerk , perhaps because its inhabitants were known for being prompt in their dismissiveness."

Or even, Newark.

originally a dutch city, New Amsterdam

the correct name in 2000 years was rather 'New Orcs'

yes ancient greek and roman history

Antioch was built by one of Alexander's generals which it bears his name antiochus.. edit was actually built by his son selecus in honor of his father antiochus

​@@user-hu4si9nm7u Greeks again crying about us ladi da nothing new, in another news water is wet

so youre syrian

@@user-hu4si9nm7uand Turkish history

yeah I'm surprised he got that wrong

Así es. La ciudad de Zaragoza que los hispanoamericanos pronunciamos Saragosa (Sara goza). 😂

@@Dan-hispano. In french it's Saragosse.

​@@Dan-hispano.I'm Mexican. Zaragoza is my surname 😅

@@TheJosman ¿Yosman y Sara Gozan?

i shat myself

@@BrokenToken1Aren't you special.

@@aidandavis_ yea

And our ancient colonists Achaeans ,colonized and have founded Crotone ( Crotonas) city 710 BC . I leave in region/state Achaia near to Laconia state that Great Spartans colonized Taranto (Tarantas) as Pelloponissian too !!

Montana - the city and the region is of Roman origin and has not changed the name

I’ve been to Nesebar it’s brilliant

In the modern Greek language we still call some Bulgarian cities with the ancient Greek / Roman name. For example, Plovdiv is still called in Greece "Philippopolis". Until recently , and maybe still in some circles- Burgas was called "Pyrgos" (= Tower) and Asenovgrad was called "Stenimachos".

Eski Zara means Old Zara. Yeni Zara would be New Zara

@@theokaraman From what I found in historical documents and books , it looks like both Bulgarain Tzarstvoms in the middle ages mostly kept the original names. The changes ware done after the Otoman liberation because the turks renamed most of the cities with turkish names. That is what triggered the changes from Turkish to Bulgaian.

This is the first time anyone has made this joke

Lol like a woman would watch a vid about ancient Rome

Its actually real cool to wake up and see an upload from toldinstone haha

Good one

@@Zigest yeah you are pretty lame, but thats ok.

ahh, a student of internet history

actually, Beekes argues for a Pre-Greek origin

Well maybe not so far away as it might seem to us today. Greek colonists from Marseille (Massalia) setteled in Empuries (emporium or trading center) on the Costa Brava close to the eastern end of the Pyrenees in 575 BC. The origin of the name however may be more uncertain.That the Greeks named the mountains after Hercules ' daughter Pyrene as is the gererally accepted theory, may only have been because the name sounded similar to them ( like Cuernavaca did to the Spanish in Mexico) as a now lost or as yet undeciphered original Iberian cognate for the Pyrenees of the people the Greeks were principally trading with. Terms for landscape features need to be agreed upon to make any sense about directions, locations and distances.Toponyms generally evolve as Garrett Ryan so excellently explains but rarely are, at least where people have been settled for many generations, completely replaced.

And Atlas mountain in North Africa Greek name

​@MegaMayday16 For the word "Atlas", its Greek origin is not that clear. Its etymology remains unknown past a certain point, since it may as well be of Berber or even pre-Greek origins.

Egypt is a greek word as well.

@@nicktamer4969 yes it is a Greek pronunciation of the Egyptian original for Memphis. The Greeks were in Egypt for a long time about two millennia and left a deep influence lasting until they were expelled from Egypt by Nasar's nationalist government around 1960. The recent discoveries of the now sunken Hellenistic city of Herakleion near Alexandria show an incredible mix and synthesis of the two cultures.

It's also older than Aramaic, and probably comes from an even earlier Semitic language. But this is a little bit iffy, since it long predates writing! Torah - which is relevant because it's a pretty old book (anything from 1300-600 BCE, depending whose timeline you accept) calls it "Dameshek" which nicely matches your Aramaic, especially since they used the same 22-letter Semitic alphabet (in slightly different forms) and neither wrote vowels. The region is called Aram Dameshek, "Aram of Damascus" to distinguish it from Aram Naharayim "Aram of the Paired Rivers" (~modern Iraq) - the language of both regions being a dialect continuum all of which was regarded as Aramaic well before Torah was written (by anybody's timeline.... except the most mystical).

It would be interesting to see this video with topic how Roman cities were called before they were "renamed" by Romans

@@metsfan1873 Interesting, we Czechs call Damascus "Damašek" (the Czech letter "š" is the equivalent of the English "sh" sound) which pretty much matches the Torah oldest variant mentioned by you.

Oldest recorded variant, probably. There are very likely references in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian records but the first two will overlap with the possible dates of Torah composition (a VERY complicated topic indeed). Egyptian records of course go much further back, but their heavy involvement as far afield as Damascus is rather late, as Egypt goes. Any historical events mentioned in what Christians call "OT" that occur after 900BCE or thereabouts, are mostly confirmed in the archaeology and sometimes in documents from the other nations involved. Anything before that, is much iffier. But that doesn't pin down the date at which things were WRITTEN. I'm talking about when things HAPPENED, and all we can say with 100% certainty is that they were written about later, but one day later or 500 years later? It's complicated. Damascus is also regarded as the oldest continuously-occupied place on earth. (There were cities before Damascus and certainly any number of villages, but the other ones have all experienced periods of abandonment. Damascus has been continuously occupied for ALL of recorded history and archeology says quite a long time before written history.

Same with Gadir (Cadiz)

More likely because of Latin having been the lingua franca and those places keeping a latin sounding name when written in Latin.

@@napoleonfeanor This may be true for Italy but definately not the case with Germany, German was the Lingua franca of central Europe during the middle ages.

@@kacperwoch4368 Not when dealing with foreign people. For example the offical language of the Hapsburg lands in Central Europe (the territory that will later be the Austrian Empire) kept latin as an official language until Joseph II ordered it to be German in the 1700s.Educated people in Europe could speak latin and apart from the Catholic church it was the language of Universities as well.

Kadyks - Cadiz Wiedeń - Wien Paryż (not Lutecja, alas!) - Paris Monachium - Muenchen Londyn - London Rodan - Rhone Sekwana - Seine

Where i live in Serbia we still call it Constantinople and Nicea

I think the "Iz" prefix in Iznik comes from Greek "eis" which means "to" Similar to : Eis tin polis -> Istanbul For Nicea : Eis Nicea -> Iznik But in the case of Izmir, it's not because of the prefix "iz". Turkish doesn't like consonant clusters, so it adds vowels in front of them Examples : Scandinavia -> Iskandinavya, Spain -> Ispanya, Smyrna -> Izmir

@@gro2020 Not sure Spain is an example of Turkish addition, given Latin "Hispania", Greek "Ισπανία" and Spanish "España". Though I guess they haven't dropped that leading vowel, which is something at least.

Vowel E/I was added before two consonants, because two consonants in the beginning are very difficult to pronounce in Turkish. That's why Stambul is pronounced Istanbul and Smyrna turned into Izmir.

It happens in Spain word for both Russian and Turkish. ispanya.

Same in England where an inhabitant of Manchester is called "Mancunian" and lots of other examples - Novocastrian for person from Newcastle etc

More examples: - Santarém: the romans named it _Scallabis,_ so its inhabitants are called "escalabitanos". - Évora: the romans named it _Ebora,_ so its inhabitants are called "eborenses". - Beja: the romans called it _Pax Julia,_ so its inhabitants are called "pacenses". - Lagos: the romans called it _Lacobriga,_ so its inhabitants are called "lacobrigenses". 🙂

@@module79l28 And therefore Lagos in Nigeria -one of the world's biggest cities!

@@kaloarepo288 - Hum... I don't see your point.

@@module79l28 Lagos in Nigeria was named by a Portuguese explorer either because of the lakes there or after the town of Lagos in Portugal

City names just changed in a way that is easy to pronounce in Turkish. Ottomans didn't bother the change the names, my guess of the reason is their claim of being a successor of Rome. After the republic, some of the names got even more Turkish sounding. Rarely, if they thought Ottomans messed up naming , the historic name was given back to the city.

Most important missed in the video is Constantinople, again changed to Istanbul by the Ottomans! Not in to the city!!

@@tanervardal4201 'Istanbul' name was given by the Republic of Turkey, not the Ottomans. The city was formally called 'Konstantiniyye' between the years 1453-1929.

@@disasterpeace9009 you are right about ottomans and rome. they changed their title to empire after conquering the constantinopol and claimed that they are successor to rome. Noone acceepts its because of religion but rome has changed it before that. Ottomans copied many thing from rome like lifestyle and arcitecture etc.90 % of our mousques are copy of hagiasophia.

Chalcedon current ,Kadikoy Skutari current ,Uskudar ,true form is this. this 2 district is close next to eachoter.

edessa and urfa doesn't sound even remotely close

Maybe only Moderna is of Latin origin while the rest are Greek (which the video oh funnily says that only cities in Greece have Greek origin name) or anatolian. Pergamum is the Latin pronunciation of Pergamon, Edessa is a Macedonian city in Greece founded by the Hellenistic dynasties after Alexander, as is Antalya, Antioch etc. Poor video

You used a lot of Greek origin ones, so I think it’s fair to mention the jewel itself Istanbul which has a Greek origin for the name as well, though not being the same as Konstantinyye

@@fishconnoisseur the video calls Greek cities as Marseille, Nice, Taranto, Smyrna etc etc etc as of romance origin...So how anyone can attribute the actual origin of the name to Greek when major roman history buffs always do the same thing again and again by handling Greek as something you can find in Greece alone? The entire Mediterranean was taken by Rome and these guys only use the latinised version of city names despite that half the empire spoke Greek as equal to Latin. Come on, its all starts with roman historians of the West, they do this thing since the middle ages.

@@vanmars5718 I’d argue modern Greeks are as Roman as Italians anyway, after all the Greeks held out as Romans far longer than Italy, and the modern Greek identity wouldn’t exist without Rome.

Baetulo is Badalona

I used to live in Tarragona! I'm English but spent 6 lovely years there. I enjoyed my time there. I used to live in the Casc Antic ("Old Town") and found out from the local museum that that was built upon the administration/forum area of Tarraco with the Cathedral build on top of the basilica. I also liked how the main square plaça de la font was build on the footprint of the old circus (chariot racetrack stadium).

I didn't know that Latin word for castle 🏰 was Castrum , it sounds similar to Greek word 'Castro ' ( Κάστρο) like Fidel 'Castro '😂😂

Vive les gaulois!

@@dianecrepeault5423 Haha, yes. But did you know Goscinny lived in Argentina, and Obelix's trousers have the colour of our flag on purpose? The protagonists's friendship takes after Argentinians' too... 🤗

I am 10.000 kilometres away from France, and I don't think I'll ever visit her, but the name Lutetia Parisorum is engraved into my brain because of Asterix lol

@@TriviRocks I did not know that, thanks for sharing that 😀

I am Mexican so I have to admit that most of my knowledge of France/Roman history comes from Asterix comics lol I'm trying to complement with these types of videos

As does the Caesarea in Israel

because Turkish and Latin pronunciations are basically the same.

And Καισάρεια or Caesárea pronounced just the same in Greek except for the 1st letter "C "that is pronounced as (K) not as ( S) for example Kaesárea as the Turkish team kayserispor 😂😂 😜

So it's not named after the muscle after all? 💪

@@mfaizsyahmi ? Oh i see, pecs 🍗as in pectoral 😅

Alba Iulia, Gyulafehérvár, Weißenburg, Belgorod

Neapolis is Greek origins word not Latin and there is a city in South italy that called Napoli if you know and means ' new city ' 😜

And during the ottoman period it was named Kyustendze. Name used in Bulgarian even today. 🙂

​@AlexandruBurda And we Romanian's use it since Rome

@@InAeternumRomaMater 🤣

@@huskytail Keep on laughing and jumping there little monkey. Both the name of "Dârstor", Constanța and Timocu are inherited by us from the Roman Empire, as Dorostolon, Constantiana and Timacum respectively. You are just too shocked to realise that both us and Greeks have a huge ancestral claim over all your homelands😁☝🏻

@@huskytail Laugh and jump how much you want, like a 🦧. But it is true, it is inherited in Romanian from Latin, just like "Darstor" and Timocu from Latin Dorostolon and Timacum respectively. The Romanian "Constanța" is inherited from Latin "Constantiana", and so is "Smirna" from Latin "Sirmium".

But we Greeks calls you Gauls not franks ( french) and the country Gallia ( Γαλλία) not France or Frankia , XD

That's very interesting. but I must ask, United or City?

@@Prefury Not a football fan, which means I am the only true winner

@@FrankyBabes Haha nice

Yes, my home city too. The fort was built at the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell - better defensive location. Like many Roman forts, a civilian _vicus_ often grew up outside the fortress. This basically was the birth of the cities. Another titbit, just as the Latin word Castra was borrowed in Anglo-Saxon Old English as C(h)ester the Latin word for small settlement _Vicus_ was borrowed into proto-Germanic was -wich or -wick. Hence, why there are a lot of placenames in Germanic speaking countries, such as England and parts of Scotland, that have the suffix -wich or -wick.

Felice Capo d'anno from Gaius of Novus Eboraci (Guy from New York)! BTW, I work for a brilliant Justice of the NYS Supreme Court Here on Staten Island named Porzio!

Same in Celtic Europe with many cities in Roman Spain, Portugal, France and England based on the Celtic tribe name or the name the Celts already used for the area.

Beja, in portuguese.

Me fool! Up to this very moment, I believed the name means "rainy castle". Now I firmly support "queen-castle". 😁 And this "Rati-" seems to me to be of Slavic origin. Like in "Racibórz"/pl -"Ratibor"/cz/de? But "-bona" sounds rather Romanesque.

@@swetoniuszkorda5737 According to the German Wikipedia, the name "Radaspona" was first documented around 770 AD, but it probably goes back to a Celtic name.

@@alexj9603 Well, thank you! Now it sounds like German "Spinnrad" - spinning-wheel. But Celtic origin likely too.

Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa is named after the Roman settlement, it wasn't inherited. Drobeta and Napoca were renamed by Ceaușescus nationalistic party. Though Cluj is also Romance

Sibiu Cibin river

Neapolis means "New City" in Greek. Before the Romans moved in, Naples was a Greek colony. The Greeks also occupied Palestine before the Romans did.

Absolutely underrated comment. That's exactly how it worked over the millennia.

Turkish people have Greek blood and they don't know it so if they decide to make test DNA possible they can find 35 to 45 % Greek DNA 😂😂

Did you know that the Celtic tribe that live in what is now Yorkshire, England was also named the Parisii tribe? I wonder if there was a link to the Gaulish Parisii? It probably came from a common Celtic word that described that tribe, like how the Germanic Franks were named after their throwing axe and the Saxons after their short swords, sax.

Fun fact : we Greeks calls you Gauls= gallous ,not the other ancient tribe of Franks( french)and your country Gallìa not France , but i don't know exactly why??🤔

@@PoolD3ad007 old habits die hard :)

That means respectful city 😜 , Greetings from Greece ,haha

And Crotone comes from ' Croton or Crotonas ' Κρότωνας in Greek . Also im leaving in same region of the ancient colonists that colonized Crotone long centuries ago 😜 , our team in football have great connection from the past with Crotone team as an Achaean guy !

We know

Good point, but as far as I know, some Greeks called themselves "romanoi"?, and were quite proud of this.

@@swetoniuszkorda5737 Romaioi not romanoi, and they spoke Greek. But my comment isn't to draw a line in some sort of antagonistic relationship/competition btw Greek & Latin (since both were official languages of the empire) but to set things in their proper status. Cause if we have videos like these, believing that Greek names only remained in greece proper (and there only they pronounced it as Greek lol) while all other names were Latin or became latinised then makes no sense for someone to understand why the Roman Empire survived in the East and being officially Greek speaking. It would appear as some sort of linguistic conquest of the later Roman state which is absolutely false. The latin speakers might have the Greek names of the cities latinised for their language use but these cities and their inhabitants never really spoke Latin (at least in the Eastern part) or called their cities in this latinised version...it wasn't a drift there, but a continuum and their language was also official in the empire (which is never understood or presented as such). I'm only trying to make justice for the Eastern part which never really presented as it should and this lead to the surprise when we hear that this part remained Roman, believed to be Roman and had this continuum for the next 1000. My opinion of course, I might be wrong.

@@vanmars5718 As far as I can follow, I can agree with you.

@@swetoniuszkorda5737 All Greeks did - certainly by the end of the 'Byzantine period' and most well into the 19th century.

Qrt could also be related to Hebrew kiriat or kariat?

@@MegaMayday16 yes.

its so interesting. the encountere between indigenous people in north africa (amazigh) and semitic people from the east is so old. the phonician and the arabs later. but between phonicinan and islamic conquest north africa also saw the arrival of jewish communities that spoke hebrew or aramaic and settled among the amazigh. its interestig that these language families and word roots are around for such a long time

Also Alba Iulia

The town's true name is Cluj in Romanian and Napoca is an archeologic site whose name was added for nationalistic reasons. The real Latin name of Cluj is Claudiopolis, or Klausenburg in German or Koloszvár in Hungarian.

Also, Apulum became the modern Alba Iulia. The castrum of the 13th legion in Alba Iulia.

@@ekesandras1481 The name of Cluj comes, most likely, from the Latin "Castrum Clus". It is mentioned in 1213 AD as "(Castrum) Clus" in Hungarian documents. The first Romanian name of the city was "Cluș", so the oldest name mentioned in Hungarian early medieval documents was the Romanian name "Cluș" which has been Magyarized later as "Kolozsvár". "Clusa/clausa" means "closed" in Latin and refers to the hills that surround the city. "Napoca" is a Dacian name that was used by Romans too after the Roman conquest of Dacia.

During the Second Punic War, the Hannibal's journey, crossing the Pyrenees and the Alps to attack Italy began from Cartagena, Spain.

also Lezhe was Roman Lissus

York in modern Welsh, is called Caer Effrog, which clearly has a link to Eborucum. Manceinion pretty similar to Mamacunium.

Nice Greek names there 😀