Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Difference between revisions

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* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s ''Alvin Maker'' series is set in an alternate North America. Many names remain familiar, but are in variant spellings, such as "Hio," "Irrakwa" and "Wobbish." All these are originally Native American words, and the familiar forms are transliterations by Francophone explorers. In this world, the Anglophones seemingly got there first, so the transliterations are a bit different.

* In the ''[[Kushiel's Legacy]]'' series by Jacqueline Carey, the maps at the beginnings of the book show that it is Europe. The UK is named Alba, Ireland is Eire, Spain is Aragonia, Germany and the northern lands are Skaldia, Italy is Caerdicca Unitas - Venice, or a suspiciously Venetian city, is [[City of Canals|La Serenissima]] - the Balkans are Illyria, Greece is Hellas, Egypt and the Maghreb is Menekhet, India is Bhodistan, China is Ch'in, Japan is the Empire of the Sun, Jebe-Barkal is Ethiopia and a bit more, The Flatlands are The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Vralia is Russia and Drujan and Khebel-im-Akkad are different parts of Ancient Persia. France is called Terre d'Ange (literally Land of Angels) but that's because it's the land of [[Mary Sue~~|Mary Sues~~]] for [[Backstory]] reasons.

* In the ''[[Kushiel's Legacy]]'' series by Jacqueline Carey, the maps at the beginnings of the book show that it is Europe. The UK is named Alba, Ireland is Eire, Spain is Aragonia, Germany and the northern lands are Skaldia, Italy is Caerdicca Unitas - Venice, or a suspiciously Venetian city, is [[City of Canals|La Serenissima]] - the Balkans are Illyria, Greece is Hellas, Egypt and the Maghreb is Menekhet, India is Bhodistan, China is Ch'in, Japan is the Empire of the Sun, Jebe-Barkal is Ethiopia and a bit more, The Flatlands are The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Vralia is Russia and Drujan and Khebel-im-Akkad are different parts of Ancient Persia. France is called Terre d'Ange (literally Land of Angels) but that's because it's the land of [[Mary Sue]]s for [[Backstory]] reasons.

** Some more accurate than others. For instance, Alba is actually the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, not the UK in total, which would be Albion.

*** Perhaps it sounds OK in D'Angeline - analogous to the way many people in our world (often speakers of English as a second language) use "England" to refer to all of mainland UK, even though that only refers to the bit south of Scotland and east of Wales.

* John Crowley in the ''Aegypt Cycle'' approaches this obliquely: One of his central characters, Pierce Padgett, is obsessed as a child with the country of "Aegypt" ~~-- which~~ is not Egypt, but rather the country where people think Gypsies come from. (But don't.)

* John Crowley in the ''Aegypt Cycle'' approaches this obliquely: One of his central characters, Pierce Padgett, is obsessed as a child with the country of "Aegypt"—which is not Egypt, but rather the country where people think Gypsies come from. (But don't.)

* In ''[[Young Wizards|So You Want To Be A Wizard]]'', the main character reads in her wizard's manual about "alternate earths where the capital of the United States was named Huictilopochtli or Lafayette City or Hrafnkell or New Washington".

** For that matter, it isn't specified whether all of these are actually [[Washington DC]] under different names. The capital could be located elsewhere.

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* [[Harry Turtledove]]

** ''The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump'': This [[Magitek]] novel is set in Angels City, on the coast of the Peaceful Ocean, and just north of the Barony of Orange. On the East Coast of the Confederated Provinces are the District of St. Columba and the city of New Jorvik.

** His more traditional alternate history novels feature this too, mainly for ~~objects -- nukes~~ become "exploding-metal bombs" (in the [[Worldwar]]/Colonization series) or "superbombs" and "sunbombs" (Timeline-191), suicide bombers become "people bombs," the Molotov cocktail is the "Featherston Fizz," and the Army's heavily armored frontline combat vehicles are "barrels," not tanks. And when the superbombs go off, they produce a "toadstool cloud". Speaking of nukes, element 92 is still named uranium, but while the USA names the next two elements neptunium and plutonium as in [[Real Life]], the Confederate States Of America goes the other direction and calls them saturnium and jovium. (Britain calls element 94 churchillium.) London, Ontario, is renamed Berlin by the occupying US authorities, Roanoke, Virginia, is called Big Lick (Justified in that that was the original name before the N&W Railroad renamed the town), and Hawaii is British-ruled and still called the Sandwich Islands.

** His more traditional alternate history novels feature this too, mainly for objects—nukes become "exploding-metal bombs" (in the [[Worldwar]]/Colonization series) or "superbombs" and "sunbombs" (Timeline-191), suicide bombers become "people bombs," the Molotov cocktail is the "Featherston Fizz," and the Army's heavily armored frontline combat vehicles are "barrels," not tanks.

And when the superbombs go off, they produce a "toadstool cloud".

Speaking of nukes, element 92 is still named uranium, but while the USA names the next two elements neptunium and plutonium as in [[Real Life]], the Confederate States Of America goes the other direction and calls them saturnium and jovium. (Britain calls element 94 churchillium.)

London, Ontario, is renamed Berlin by the occupying US authorities, Roanoke, Virginia, is called Big Lick (Justified in that that was the original name before the N&W Railroad renamed the town), and Hawaii is British-ruled and still called the Sandwich Islands.

** His ''War Between the Provinces'' series is basically a retelling of the American Civil War in the West from Chickamauga on, only with the map reversed (the rebels are in the north), the colors reversed (because indigo is a major rebel product) and with names either given alternates or horrid puns. General Rosecrans is renamed "Guildenstern." Chickamauga is renamed "The River of Death," and Lookout Mountain, "Sentry Peak." Georgia becomes "Peachtree," and Selma, Alabama is renamed "Hayek."

** [[Harry Turtledove]] and Richard Dreyfus do this in ''The Two Georges'' with Boston, Oregon (rejected in real life by a coin flip; you probably know the city as Portland).

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* ''[[Seventh Sea]]'' has thinly veiled Renaissance-Enlightenment pastiches of the British Isles (Avalon), France (Montaigne), Italy (Vodacce), Eisen (Germany/the remnants of the [[Holy Roman Empire]]), Castille (Spain), Ussura (Russia) and Vendel (a combination of several Nordic and northern European states). There's also The Crescent Empire (the Middle East), Cathay (East Asia) and an island chain to represent the Caribbean.

* ''Damnation Decade'', a Green Ronin d20 System RPG based on tropes from 1970's sci-fi TV and movies, renames ''everything'': America gets the slight change to Americo, Gordon Lightfoot and Edmund Fitzgerald get their names swapped, and then it gets weird (Richard Nixon becomes "Stanton Spobeck," for one).

* ''Tribe 8'' may be the weirdest example. The game takes place [[After the End]] when a bunch of [[Cosmic Horror~~|Cosmic Horrors~~]] have descended from the sky and humans are organized in tribes around "Fatimas", avatars of the Goddess. The game takes place in the land of Vimary... which was once ''Montreal'' (founded in real life under the name Ville-Marie).

* ''Tribe 8'' may be the weirdest example. The game takes place [[After the End]] when a bunch of [[Cosmic Horror]]s have descended from the sky and humans are organized in tribes around "Fatimas", avatars of the Goddess. The game takes place in the land of Vimary... which was once ''Montreal'' (founded in real life under the name Ville-Marie).

* ''[[Castle Falkenstein]]'' : Most of Europe - sorry, "Europa" - has the same names and borders as in our reality, but South America is Antillea, and the Atlantic Ocean is the Atlantean Ocean, among other things.

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* ''[[Decades of Darkness]]'' has this: Knoxville, TN is the new * US capital Columbia, Equador is northern Brazil, New England is a much more extensive term, and colonial cities across Africa, Australia, Asia and the Americas have different names.

** Also ~~inverted -- The~~ government of His Majesty, the Tsar of All the Russias, would like to make perfectly clear that it's Constantinople, not Istanbul.

** Also inverted—The government of His Majesty, the Tsar of All the Russias, would like to make perfectly clear that it's Constantinople, not Istanbul.

== Real life ==

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* "Japan" is also "Nippon" or "Nihon", or "The Source of the Sun". The name "Japan" in English and a lot of other languages comes from an old Chinese pronunciation for "Nihon" which was "Cipan" which was written by Marco Polo as "Cipangu". When the Portuguese came to Malaysia, they encountered the pronunciation having turned into "Jepang". And then when it was brought to English, it was "Giapan".

** "Nippon" is the official designation, used in official Japanese government communication, as well as most corporate and formal situations. "Nihon" is a dialect variant used in casual, informal situations.

*** To expand further, 'Nippon' is the traditional form, remembered because of its importance and its frequent use in official situations; however, a few centuries of linguistic drift have corrupted the 'pp' sound to an 'h' sound<ref>via something like an 'f' sound, which is why you sometimes see 'Nifon', particularly in documents dating from Japan's early contact with the West, when it was current</ref>, hence the casual form used in daily conversation.

*** To expand further, 'Nippon' is the traditional form, remembered because of its importance and its frequent use in official situations; however, a few centuries of linguistic drift have corrupted the 'pp' sound to an 'h' sound,<ref>via something like an 'f' sound, which is why you sometimes see 'Nifon', particularly in documents dating from Japan's early contact with the West, when it was current</ref> hence the casual form used in daily conversation.

* There once was a Roman settlement in Britain named Eboracum, probably named after a Celtic town possible itself named after a founder called Eboras or alternatively from Eborakon meaning "place of yew trees". When the Angles invaded, they renamed it Eoforwic (switching Ebor for Anglian Eofor meaning boar). Then the vikings came, and the name of the city became Jórvík. Following the Norman conquest, the name eventually changed to York.

* Mumbai, the second largest city in the world, was known as Bombay until 1995.

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*** Further muddling things is that both Han and Choson were old names of Korea before the split. The name Korea itself is also derived from one of those old names.

* [[Stroke Country]]. In particular, the Derry/Londonderry issue - use either one and you risk offending someone, whether it's the unionists or republicans. A compromise is the nickname The Maiden City.

* Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia. During the antiquity it was Sunda Kelapa. Then after Fatahillah, the general of the Sultanate of Demak, [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men|drove the Portuguese out]], it became Jayakarta (City of Glory). Then during the Dutch Colonial era it was called Batavia. And finally, when [[World War 2|the Japanese took over]], it was renamed Jakarta, its official name today. (The [[Imperial Japan~~|Imperial Japanese~~]], despite all the horrid things they did, fostered a sense of Asian self-esteem by reviving old or ancient Asian cultures that were made illegal in Asian countries during European rule.)

* Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia. During the antiquity it was Sunda Kelapa. Then after Fatahillah, the general of the Sultanate of Demak, [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men|drove the Portuguese out]], it became Jayakarta (City of Glory). Then during the Dutch Colonial era it was called Batavia. And finally, when [[World War 2|the Japanese took over]], it was renamed Jakarta, its official name today. (The [[Imperial Japan]]ese, despite all the horrid things they did, fostered a sense of Asian self-esteem by reviving old or ancient Asian cultures that were made illegal in Asian countries during European rule.)