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Chevalier
Istanbul is turkish word and it means as you wrote "inside the City" or "towards the City" (people used to called Constantinople as "the City", since it was considered to be the greatest city of this era). Also, another name used by the folk was Vasileuoussa, which can be translated as "The Ruling City" or "The City of the Kings".
Finally Byzantium is just the latin version of the greek Byzantion or Vyzantion, which was the first name of the city and it is originated from the founder of the city (Byzas or Vyzas).

 

The Vikings called Constantinople Miklagard, and I forget what it means. (Maybe great city)

 

I have a friend at school that tells me no end of crap that I will never have use of ever again in my life. I will share it with you.

It costs $17 million to have 'Happy Birthday' in a movie

The Moon has not been claimed by any country, so if you had the billions needed just lying around the house, you could go up there and claim it for yourself.

Saturn has 18 moons.

'Hush' by Deep Purple isn't actually a Deep Purple Song.

Vegemite to have 600% more vitamins than any other substance on earth, in volume.

Only Australians, Gods chosen superrace can consume this mighty amount of vitamins. Any other that attempts has his mouth blown off his face.

There are 162 cans of beer in a single Keg of beer.

Squid keep their semen in their heads.

Giant squid live for 200 days. They grow from 2 cm long to over 40m long. (To find out what this is in inches, get a calculator)

Alfred Hitchcock had his bellybutton removed.

He also made a cameo appearence in all of his TV shows.

Ian McKellen (Gandalf and Magneto) is gay.

Hitler did not drink, smoke, gamble, cheat on his girlfreind, was a vegetarian and had no criminal record.

Beethoven had 3 deaf siblings, 1 retarded sibling, 1 blind sibling and his mother had syphlis.

Christopher Columbus and King Henry (the great) both died of Syphlis

Dogs can't decifer size.

 

Apparently its Adolf Hitlers birthday on Good Friday.

The only verse of the Bible I can realy remember is Revelations 9:11 and deals with Abaddon.

 

An extremely high numbers of british dwarfs are member of the actors union. Astonishing but apparently true.


And I find 'Queueing' to be one of the most curiousely spelled words in the english language.

 

My record for ko's in Dynasty Warriors 4 is 3133

 

Heh, 'Istanbul' is one of a few alternative Greek names a bit corrupted. In fact it's actually older than Turkish presence in Minor Asia (Turkish sources also indicate the word as Greek in origin). 'Eis ten polein' is regular ancient Greek (that I've had the pain of studying) and means exactly 'inside (or within) the city' or 'to the city' (only in 'going to the city' and similar, indicating the city as the point of destination). Pronounced as in classical Greek it's very similar in sound to 'Istanbul' too.

Ancient 'Basileussa' (as in the name 'Basilissa') means just 'queen', which is very appropriate. The word was also used with reference to the Emperor's wife since the Emperor's Greek title was 'basileus' (yes, it's the Greek form, not some Latin one ) just like any king's one (hence referred to as 'the King of Rome' by Arabs and Seljuks).

Note: 'v' forms are modern Greek ones. Ancient forms are always written with 'b'. Sometimes 'u' in 'eu' is read as 'v' in English or digamma (veeery old, extinct in classical Greek ) is used as 'f' or weak 'v'.

Miklagard is 'The Great City' IIRC.

Speaking of ancient Greek roots of popular names, 'Bosphorus' has exactly the same meaning as 'Oxford'.

[ April 24, 2003, 02:23: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

The term "Vasileuoussa" is the female present participle of the verb "vasileuo", which means rule or reign. Therefore the translation "ruling city" or "city of the kings" is more appropriate than "queen" at least in the specific case.

Sorry mate but you are wrong. In the greek alphabet, which is used with its current form since 5th century B.C., the letter "b" is pronounced as "v", which is a letter that does not exist in any of the greek alphabets if I remember correct (the last time i studied all these things was 11 years ago ). The latin pronunciation of "b" in ancient and modern greek language is represented by the compination of the "m" and "p","mp".

 

Ah, OK, I've not really been dealing with other forms than ancient ones.

Only in modern Greek is 'B' pronounced as 'v'. Formally, in ancient Greek the 'v' sound was represented by either digamma or specific use of 'u' and the sound represented by 'b' is much like Latin 'b'. Corruptions like pronouncing 'v' and 'b' in one another's stead (much like children, undeducated people or people with articulation problems do) happened quite often though, in Latin too - or introducing Greek words to Latin (many Latin v- words come from Greek b- words), and only such forms of some words have survived. It's especially visible in how Spanish developed from Latin.

Besides - isn't that 'vasileuoussa' a mediaeval or modern form? In ancient present participles it's just one 's' for one sigma in that place - like 'basileuousa' with the latter 'u' circumflexed... Heh, transcriptions to Latin alphabet are bound to be awful anyway. And yes - if that's this same word then definitely it's 'reigning city'.

Last but not least, the alphabet is a bit older - some 8th century BC. The digamma sound that could roughly stand for 'v' was extinct before 5th century BC.

[ April 24, 2003, 13:20: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Hmmm...2012 is the next year of the Dragon. Interesting. In the Bible, the end of the world has a dragon in it. And December is the month I was born in, and I am a Dragon. And Revelations is my favorite book of the Bible.

 

And on that day Nibiru is ment to come too close to Earth and knock it off its orbit.

The ancient name for Earth is Tiamat.

Jupiter has 58 moons. 18 of these were discovered this year.

 

Tiamat was the name of something in one of the Final Fantasy video games, but I can't remember what for.

 

Humans (males, that is) have the largest penis' in proportion to thier body size of all mammals.

Sylvania, Magnavox and Phillips are all the same company.

I used to think I was a robot when I was a little girl.

Hair, toenails and fingernails continue to grow after you die.

It takes an average of seven minutes for a human to fall into REM sleep.

Gary Gygax was prevented from publishing his Legendary Journeys game by TSR since he developed most of it on thier computers.

William Shatner is an @$$.

'Floaties' are dried cells floating on your cornea (I used to think I was seeing air).

 

A can of Spam is opened every 4 seconds

The ancient Romans built such an excellent system of roads that the saying arose 'all roads lead to Rome,' that is, no matter which road one starts a journey on, he will finally reach Rome if he keeps on traveling. The popular saying came to mean that all ways or methods of doing something end in the same result, no method being better than another.

The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are known as the philtrum.

You actually have a bone in your tongue located at the base of it between the mandible and the voice box., it's v shaped and is not connected to any other bones. It's used to support the tongue and the muscles around it.

The first word spoken by an ape in the movie 'Planet of the Apes' was 'smile

There's only one insect that can turn it's head. The Praying Mantis.

There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.

 

There are 3 new ops in #sorcerers.

 

You can draw a circle through any three points.

 

That's true only if you assume that a 100% straight line is impossible - which is more or less true in practice, but untrue in theory, where it's taken as granted that what's meant to be straight is straight . So if you have three points on one line, one of them is bound to lie inside or outside the circle and not on the circumference.

 

Sorcerer of the South,

Well it certainly is curiousely spelt in that post. Were the two typos deliberate?

Oh and some useless information, Spell Check.net says -

Microsoft Word (97), does not accept the word 'Queening' it suggests - Queering, Quelling, and, Queuing.

Btw i assume the word you were looking for in your post is Queuing, not Queueing. If it was spelt Queueing rather than Queing i would find it most curious that so many curious people would spell it while Queueing in a Queue.

Yes its' a rathur hard werd to spil. No offence intended.

 

Your right chev, I was in a hurry so I forgot to add "unless they are in a straight line".

Thanks for catching that.

 

ooops at misspelling. bit much to drink I think.
still good word.