Constantinople or Istanbul what do you call it?

[Forlon]

So not Istanbul?

No!

Yes! You can call it whatever you want, but on maps and to the most of the rest of the world its Istanbul.

[Rolamec]

So not Istanbul?

No!

You sure? I mean have you actually taken out the time, wrote out the pros and cons on a piece of paper, evaluate both sides carefully, perhaps even creating a synthesis, where two ideas could contribute to a new and different truth? I mean have ya? This is important stuff here, affecting the lives of millions, if no billions of people...all hang on whether or not you call it Constantinople or Istanbul, so again, I ask...are you sure?

[The Archregimancy]

I might also have mentioned China itself, which has not called itself anything like that since the fall of the Qin dynasty (Qin>China) ca. 200 BC, if it ever even did. As no doubt you know, it calls itself Jongguo, the Middle Kingdom (in the middle between Heaven and us barbarians, that is, not the middle of the Earth) and the people (and anything else Chinese) are Han, after the dynasty that succeeded the Qin. The term Qin was used for China because, I guess, that's when Greek traders first encountered China (or else the Qin emperor insisted on the term).

That's a common misconception. It appears, however, that 'Qin' is not the most likely root of China's European language exonym. Counter-intuitively (and slightly ironically), we might have in fact adopted the Sanskrit name for Tibet to apply to all of modern China.

Quoting a footnote from the bottom of page 137 of Nicholas Ostler's 2005 Empires of the Word; A Language History of the World:

This [Qin] is often proposed as the etymology for the name China, a name that seems to have reached the West through Persian and Italian. But the Chinese use rather the names of the Han or Tang dynasties as the name of their nation, and the form of the name suggests that it is derived from the Sanskrit name, Cina. This applied mainly to the area of Tibet, though also on occasions included Assam and Burma (Sircar 1971: 104-5). China as a whole was known to the Indians as Mahacina, 'Great China': this, for example, is where the Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang told the Indians where he was from when he visited in 629.

[Feral Land]

I refer to the city as Istanbul but will refer to its other names, Canstantinople or Byzantium when engaged in historical conversations.

[Coccygia]

Well, I'm goin' back to Constantinople until they fess up about the Armenian Genocide.

[Tekke]

They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

[...]
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
[...]