Gazi Antep or Gaziantep? That is my question...

image via digitaltrends.com

Being a creature who loves the world of words, I generally pay attention to roots/stems, possible origins of a word, etc. A few things about the town names in Turkey which I've observed:

Gaziantep might have been Gazi Antep, and I sort of figured this out in a weird way. Ask someone from that town where they're from and they might tell you they are "Antepli", or from Antep. So what's the Gazi part about? Lucky for me (and you) I travel with my handy-dandy reference guide - erm - husband. Gazi can also be spelled ghazi and means warrior. Warriors are from Antep, I guess?

How about Kahramanmaraş?  Kahramanmaraş or Kahraman Maraş. I like the ice cream from there - or at least the guy in Mersin who's from there makes good ice cream, maybe it has something to do with that? Nope. For Maraş, we honor the hero.

Then there's Şanliurfa, or Şanli Urfa, aka famous, but for what? I found all kinds of foods like kebab and cheese, etc, but you know Gazi Antep has plenty of yummy stuff too.

There are probably other examples and I've noticed the trend doesn't apply to just cities. Example: Fatih Sultan Mehmet. The guy's name was Mehmet! Fatih=Victor Now we have Fatihs and Sultans and Mehmets...but that's another story.

Imagine if we had names like that. Instead of New York, it could have been Opulent York or maybeVogue York, although I suppose at the time it was named, NY was neither of those things.

Founder President George?

Perhaps I need to work on the embellishment technique.

So:

Who is the hero of Maraş? Who is the Warrior of Antep? Why is Urfa famous? Well, that seems to be my homework for the week. That and the gypsy girl from Gaziantep.

Gaziantep "Antep the Victorious Warrior"