Samsun

About Samsun

Samsun is a city on the north coast of Turkey and a major Black Sea port. The urban area recorded a population of 738,692 in 2022. The city is the capital of Samsun Province which has a population of 1,382,376. The city is home to Ondokuz Mayıs University, several hospitals, three large shopping malls, Samsunspor football club, an opera house and a large and modern manufacturing district. The city is best known as the place where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk began the Turkish War of Independence in 1919.

Although Amisos is attested in Greek historical sources, the -ssos / -sos ending is widely discussed in scholarship as reflecting an Anatolian, especially Luwian, substrate rather than a straightforward Greek derivation.

The present name of the city is believed to have come from its former Greek name of Amisós (Αμισός) by a reinterpretation of eís Amisón (meaning "to Amisós") and ounta (Greek suffix for place names) to [eí]s Am[p]s-únta (Σαμψούντα: Sampsúnta) and then Samsun.

The early Greek historian Hecataeus wrote that Amisos was formerly called Enete, the place mentioned in Homer's Iliad. In Book II, Homer says that the ἐνετοί (Enetoi) inhabited Paphlagonia...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.