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10 famous cities that changed their names over time

These cities that changed their names show how empire, revolution and independence redrew the map over centuries

A city's name records whoever held power when it was chosen. Colonial administrators, revolutionary governments and newly independent states have all redrawn the map to erase a predecessor or stake a claim of their own. The result is a long roster of cities that changed their names, whose discarded labels still surface in old atlases, family letters, airport codes and product branding. The places themselves often look nothing like they did when those names were in use.

Tracking these switches is a shortcut into modern political history. When a colonial title gives way to an indigenous one, the change usually marks the end of foreign rule. When a new government renames a city after one of its own leaders, it signals a break with a monarchy, a war or a discredited past. Some changes were quiet and bureaucratic, the product of spelling reform or a new transliteration standard. Others arrived with revolution, occupation or a coup.

The timing varies widely. Istanbul's official break with Constantinople dates to 1930, old enough that a 1953 novelty song was written about it. Mumbai replaced Bombay in 1995, recent enough that plenty of residents still use both. A few of these cities ran through more than one name. St. Petersburg has carried three titles in just over three centuries. Several renamings never fully landed. Vietnamese speakers and overseas communities still say Saigon, the Bombay Stock Exchange kept its old title and Peking duck was never rebranded.

The 10 entries that follow span Europe, Asia and Africa. Each explains what the city was called before, who ordered the change and what the place is called now. That context does practical work. When a grandparent mentions Rangoon, an archive labels a photograph Batavia or a novel is set in Christiania, the modern city on the map becomes identifiable. It also explains why some old names refuse to disappear. A name change is a legal act, but usage is a habit, and the two rarely move at the same speed.

Istanbul, formerly Constantinople

Istanbul became the city's sole official name in 1930, replacing Constantinople, which had identified the settlement for roughly 1,600 years. The Turkish Republic made the change as part of a wider push to standardize place names and shed the administrative vocabulary of the Ottoman era.

The older name honored the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who in 330 AD made the city the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. It held that role through the Byzantine centuries, until Ottoman forces under Mehmed II captured it in 1453. Ottoman rulers did not discard Constantinople right away. The name stayed in official and diplomatic use alongside other local names for centuries afterward.

The end of empire forced the issue. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and placed the capital inland at Ankara. Stripped of its role as the seat of government, the city was renamed in line with the republic's secular, Turkish-language program. Enforcement arrived through the mail. Turkish postal authorities began rejecting or returning foreign correspondence addressed to Constantinople. Governments, shipping firms and newspapers abroad fell into line and adopted the new spelling.

The name itself predates the 1930 decree by centuries. It traces to the Greek phrase "eis tin polin," meaning roughly "to the city" — a shorthand residents used for generations while the formal name remained Constantinople. Before Constantine, the site was a Greek colony called Byzantium, founded around 657 BC. That gives the place at least three major names across its recorded history.

Istanbul today is Turkey's largest city and its commercial center, with a population above 15 million spread across both banks of the Bosphorus and two continents. Ankara keeps the political functions. Constantinople survives mainly in Byzantine and Ottoman scholarship, in church history, and in the 1953 novelty song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," which fixed a bureaucratic decision from two decades earlier into popular memory.

Mumbai, formerly Bombay

Bombay officially became Mumbai in 1995, by order of the Shiv Sena-led government of Maharashtra. The name honors Mumbadevi, a Hindu goddess long venerated by the city's Koli fishing community and treated as its patron deity. The switch formed part of a broader push to replace names tied to foreign rule with ones drawn from local language.

The older name most likely traces to the Portuguese, who held the cluster of islands that became the city from the 16th century. They used a form resembling "Bom Bahia," meaning good bay. England acquired the territory in 1661 through the marriage treaty between Catherine of Braganza and King Charles II. The crown leased it to the East India Company in 1668 for a nominal annual rent. Under company rule and then direct British administration, the port grew into a cotton trading center and a seat of colonial government.

Pressure to shed colonial place names built after independence in 1947. The 1995 decision answered a narrower political demand. It drew on Marathi regional identity and on the strength of Marathi nationalist parties in Maharashtra. Their argument was that the city belonged to the state's majority language community rather than to its English-speaking commercial class.

Adoption was uneven. Residents, businesses and foreign news outlets........

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