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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

the sultans of Ottoman empire still had the title of kayser-i rûm (Caesar of Rome) until the _sixteenth century_.

Even longer than that. Up to the middle of the 16th century, many Ottoman sultans considered it their most important title. After that, it quickly fell in importance and was supplanted by Islamic claim to legitimacy, but it was still used sporadically in the 18th century.

And Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. More or less equivalent situations.

Anyone who's played the Crusader Kings series of games knows how important these titles are to a dynasty on the rise.

This is also the origin of the Russian title of Czar or Tsar depending on the spelling you prefer.

Well the Roman emperor granted the title of Caesar to a Bulgarian in 705 which quickly turned into something that sounds like "tsar".

A bit over 840 years before the first Muscovy Tsar of Russia.

The Ottoman sultan just took it for himself because he conquered the territory and the people living there.

Many Greeks used to call themselves Romioi well into the 20th century.

Reminder that the modern pronunciation of "Caesar" has almost nothing to do with the original Latin, and that the German "Kaiser" is actually a fairly good phonetic transcription of the latter.

Which modern pronunciation? :)

It was a big highlight of my adult life to learn that each country pronounces latin their own way cause they map their spelling over it.

E.g. Italians read the "c" in Caesar as the ch in 'chair", Hungarians as ts in tsar, Americans (anglophones ?) as s in sea.

But yeah the German pronunciation of kaiser is probably closer to classic latin.

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