Geshundheit.
Damn you! I had successfully blocked that out of my memory. Now you revived “Bowser” and all that entails for me.
No, I’m pretty sure it was Plucky Duck, Private Eye.
(Although why anyone would want to start a detective agency in Istanbul/Constantinople/Byzantium/all of the above, I have no idea…)
The “humorous piece” that is mentioned here sounds like the poem/folk song “Abdullah Bulbul Amir” which lyrics can be found here. It is a “descendant” only in the sense of the mention of “ethnic and religious struggles” and not in the direct quoting sense.
Information about the writer of the lyrics, Jimmy Kennedy can be found here, which mentions the Four Tops (1954) and also includes the the interesting fact that he was the author of “The Hokey Pokey”! (although that wasn’t exactly the original title).
Oops, Make that Four Lads.
And sorry, Lok, but the Ohio City in Cleveland (formerly across the Cuyahoga from Cleveland) goes back more than 160 years, since its founding in 1836.
A slight hijack…
…And, as a side note, “Abdullah Bulbul Amir” is the song the android Lore sings on an episode of Star Trek: TNG.
And San Francisco used to be named “Yerba Buena”
Ranchoth
Neil Diamond singing Istanbul? My mind can’t grasp that.
And pot used to be called “muggles”, which is my favorite slang term for it.
“Still it’s Turkish delight
on a moonlit night”…
Pity they changed it. “The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Pig’s Eye” It’s got a ring to it.
Well, if you’re going to go that way, it should really be “The Twin Cities of St. Anthony and Pig’s Eye”.
jayjay
Nearly all Egyptian place names have changed from ancient times, some more than once, as different conquerors took over.
The U.S. has had fewer changes than other places, since we’re much newer, and haven’t had successions of conquerors. Still, there are some:
Albany, NY was originally Ft. Orange
Stillwater, NY, was originally Saratoga. It changed because of confusion with the larger Saratoga Springs, but is home for the Battle of Saratoga battlefield. There is a movement to change the name to Old Saratoga, but it hasn’t gotten enough support.
Correct. (It was named after a British Army officer, Colonel John By.)
Sudbury, a smaller city in the same province, was once called “Ste-Anne-Among-The-Pines”.
Toronto was “York”
There are plenty of places in Northern Canada that used to have English names like “Davis Inlet” and have reverted to their Inuktitut names- things like “Kangiksuallujjuak”. I can’t remember them all. (Note: Davis Inlet and Kangik(soft ‘g’)suallujjuak are not the same place)
And of course, Petrograd (St. Petersburg) was Leningrad for a while, no?
Kitchener, another city in the Canadian province of Ontario, was called Berlin until the Great War broke out. People decided it was unpatriotic, so they renamed the town after the secretary of war.
Jacksonville, Fla. used to be Wacca Pilatka, in the native tongue (Creek? Timuquan?), which the English translated as Cowford. This was many years after but near the site of the first Eurpoean settlement in what became the USA - Fort Caroline. Then the Spaniards got their shorts in a wad, established St. Augustine down the coast and massacred the French. So now St. Augustine is the oldest continuous Euro-settlement in the USA.
I’ve nothing meaningful to add - just came to say that I stumbled upon the They Might Be Giants version on my radio a couple days ago and it made me so very happy 
Four Lads is correct, Four Tops is wrong.
Four Lads is correct, Four Tops is wrong.
Four Lads is correct, Four Tops is wrong.
Four Lads is correct, Four Tops is wrong.
[sub]<Gb turns around, steps out of the chalkboard>[/sub]
Oh, sorry! Am I on? Where was I? Oh, Thanks for the info ST Urno, at least there is a good chance I did not imagine the comedy sketch on the radio. I still insist that it was not a poetry sketch.
And here is my bit of name change trivia:
Before independence, Mexico and Central America were known as “Nueva España” (New Spain) Mexico City was Tenochtitlan during the Aztec empire, but the entire official name of the city still includes that old title!
I wonder (if just like in the case of Los Angeles, that has an ungodly long official name) if the Pig’s Eye from Minneapolis still lives!