• @[email protected]English
    26•24 days ago

    I recently learned that Istanbul is actually a Greek based mashup word for “in the city”

    • @[email protected]English
      28•1 month ago

      If you look deep enough, pretty much every city’s name is actually some banale description of the location or some guy who was relevant to it’s founding.

      • Skua
        10•1 month ago

        Examples of this in the cities of Scotland that we can actually trace the etymologies of:

        • Perth: “Copse”. Perth is in a forested area
        • Aberdeen: “Mouth of Devona’s river”. Devona was an old Celtic goddess, and Aberdeen actually lies between the mouths of two rivers named for her
        • Inverness: “Mouth of the roaring river”. Inver- derives from the Gaelic branch of the Celtic languages, whereas Aber- comes from the Brythonic branch. It’s at the mouth of the river Ness, which is one of the fastest-discharging rivers in the UK
        • Glasgow: “green hollow”. “Hollow” here is in the sense of a small valley. Glasgow is one of the rainiest cities in Europe and also has a remarkably temperate climate for being at the same latitude as Moscow, so it probably was very green before it became a city
          • Skua
            1•25 days ago

            Yes and no. Both of the major rivers at Aberdeen — the Don and the Dee — are derived from the name of Devona. The original settlement of Aberdeen was around the Don rather than the Dee. The bit around the Dee is “New Aberdeen” (or at least, it was “new” in the 12th century). While the Dee > Deen connection is an intuitive one, Don > Deen also keeps the consonants consistent

            But also, it felt worthwhile to dig into what the names within each name meant too, which is why I gave “mouth of the roaring river” instead of “mouth of the Ness”

      • @ChickenLadyLovesLifeEnglish
        4•1 month ago

        I only recently learned that Budapest was originally two separate cities on opposite sides of a river named Buda and Pest.

      • @shalafiEnglish
        3•1 month ago

        The rivers here are names of colors.

    • @[email protected]
      4•1 month ago

      So is Al-Madinah (literally ‘The City’) in KSA.

      Makes me wish I could register “the pen” as a trademark or something and start selling pens under that name. I wonder if that also makes it impossible for anyone ever find this brand online.

      • @Aachen
        7•1 month ago

        Technically, Al-Madinah is shortened for Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah, which means The Luminous City.

        So maybe you could sell ‘the luminous pen’ instead 🤔