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This is a linguistic issue. The Modern Turkish name for the Ottoman Empire is Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, which clearly comes from Osman and not Ottoman.

Many Arabs, even to this day, do not pronounce the letter "thaa" (ث) correctly. It should be pronounced as the "th" in "thin", but many Arabs pronounce is like the "s" in "some". As a result, the Caliph Othman would be mispronounced Osman. Since Turkish does not have a "th", the Turks went with this Arabic mispronunciation by naming their children Osman. English, however, had the "th" and therefore called the Empire the Othman Empire before the "th" was weakened to just a "t" and you have the Otman Empire which changed vowels (as is common in English phonology) and became the Ottoman Empire.

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12y ago

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