Context: The Greeks used to say 'εἰς τὴν πόλιν' (eis tin polin), which the Turks said as Is-tan-bul. The phrase meaning 'to the city'
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Means, "is the city", yeah? Like, the Greeks just referred to it as The City?
Pretty unrelated, but I always wondered if the -pur ending for Indian cities was a cognate of -polis.
It actually is, the -pur ending comes from Sanskrit पुर् (púr) which is related to greek πόλις (polis)
Ok. Thanks for confirming that, and answering my second unasked question. I'd wondered if it was a legacy of Alexander's conquests, but doubted because I didn't think he made it as far as Bengal, though I wondered if it was a Greek linguistic relic that got naturalised into Hindi/Bengali. It's Sanskrit; makes more sense.