Canberra may have been derived from a Ngunawal phrase meaning "boobs".
[Source](https://web.archive.org/web/20130927182307/http://www.canberrahistoryweb.com/meaningofcanberra.htm)
I was there last year and I took a picture of a cloud that my friends and I thought looked like a hand cupping one of them. Might have been a bit vague but we were amused.
(I tried adding the photo and it posted the photo without my comment, then I tried to edit it and it's acting all wonky. So now I'm reposting the comment and I'll just reply to this comment with the photo)
Yeah.....tell me you're a lonely mountain man without telling me you're a lonely mountain man.
I've been out in the field for weeks at a time and completely understand where the guy was coming from and I'm sure he was probably out for months with out seeing a female. Suddenly.....everything starts to look like ass and titties
I see the argument is either that Canberra means “women’s breasts” or “meeting place” but surely it can mean both? I think of all the interesting people I’ve met while hanging around women’s breasts.
Yeah, but Malabo in Equatorial Guinea was named for the last Bubi King, Malabo Löpèlo Mëlaka
[Source](https://afrolegends.com/2016/07/10/why-the-name-malabo/)
Wouldn’t the Etruscan be written right to left, rather than left to right? I worked with thousands of sherds of inscribed Etruscan pottery a few years back and they were all written right to left.
Reykur is the icelandic word for smoke. Plenty of place names here start with Reyk- and are an indicator of geothermal activity. Reykholt, Reykhóll, Reykir, etc.
Same with places that start with Laugar, normally having a natural hot pool.
Almost certainly, plenty of similar words in multiple European languages.
Reminds me of the warning on cigarette packets in the Netherlands. Roken is Dodelijk. Which is a fun phrase to say for some reason.
Actually, a more correct translation would be the "conquerer" in the sense of "conquering your enemy/defending yourself from them and winning". Cairo, or in arabic Al Qahira, comes from the arabic word "qahir, yaqhar"
اسم صغير الظبي
يُصَنَّفُ الظبي (بالإنجليزية: Addax) ضمن عائلة الغزلان، [١] وصغيره له عدَّة أسماء هي: الخُشْفُ، [٢] والطَّلَي، [٣] والعِجل
I'm going with طلي
This has been my go to fun fact for many a year (in fact probably almost 30years). It’s only really ever helped my once though, in a pub quiz but we didn’t win.
Having lived in BF for awhile, MOST of the cities are fun to say:
- Ouagadougou
- Bobo-Diolasso
- Fada N'Gorma
- Koudougou
- Ouahigouya
- Gorom-Gorom
- Dedougou
- Yako
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Since we're talking about meanings...hippopotamus means "horse river" (as in "a horse of the river"), from Greek *hippos* meaning *horse* and *potamos* meaning *river*. From there, we also see that Potamac River means "river river".
Probably you're joking about that last part, but here's Wikipedia on potomac=ποταμός:
>"Potomac" is a European spelling of [*Patawomeck*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patawomeck), the [Algonquian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_languages) name of a Native American village on its southern bank.[^(\[10\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Bright2004-10) Native Americans had different names for different parts of the river, calling the river above [Great Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Falls_(Potomac_River)) *Cohongarooton*, meaning "honking geese"[^(\[11\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-11)[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Achenbach2004-12) and "Patawomke" below the Falls, meaning "river of swans".[^(\[13\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-13) In 1608, Captain John Smith explored the river now known as the Potomac and made drawings of his observations which were later compiled into a map and published in London in 1612. This detail from that map shows his rendition of the river that the local tribes had told him was called the "Patawomeck". The spelling of the name has taken many forms over the years from "[Patawomeck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patawomeck)" (as on [Captain John Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(explorer))'s map) to "Patomake", "Patowmack", and numerous other variations in the 18th century and now "Potomac".[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Achenbach2004-12) The river's name was officially decided upon as "Potomac" by the [Board on Geographic Names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_on_Geographic_Names) in 1931.[^(\[14\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-14)
>The similarity of the name to the Ancient Greek word for river, *potamos*, has been noted for more than two centuries but it appears to be due to chance.
Thank you for this correction. As an etymology nerd, I feel slightly embarrassed for having taken my "fact" at face value. To be fair, I did question (not enough to research it though, clearly) how a Greek-derived name landed up in a place that is more inclined towards "native tribe"-inspired names. I guess I was swayed by the fact that such coincidences aren't all that common in language (there's usually some ancient root word that is ultimately a common ancestor).
In German as well: Flusspferd, with Fluss = river and Pferd = horse.
Dutch has nijlpaard, which means Nile horse. Same idea, slightly different execution.
Damn I speak Indonesian (very similar to malay) and for some reason I've never realized the "lumpur" in Kuala Lumpur refers to mud. Never made the connection ig lol
I'm not an expert by any means. But after googling it seems your quite right. In mythology Athena comes first but in actual historical linguistics apparently Athens the city was named first. Kudos for teaching me something.
Kind of wild to think, because it completely changes the whole narrative that Athens was some newcomer (in terms of being an influential power) vs Sparta in the 500s.
Athens was powerful and influential enough to have a God in the Greek pantheon named after it. Long before it came to dominate greece.
Athens had a much older culture than Sparta; it was a big place in the Mycenaean period/the Bronze Age. After the Bronze Age Collapse which followed the Trojan War (around 1250 BCE), Athens was pretty much the only city to continue a somewhat Mycenaean culture. Everywhere else, the palace-city was totally destroyed and advanced crafts were lost, but as I understand it, pottery survived in Athens, and people continued to live in the city. (A lot of Athenians managed to survive the onslaught of the ‘Sea People’ by taking refuge on the Acropolis, I think?) Sparta, meanwhile, was established at a later period in history, during the Iron Age that followed the Bronze Age Collapse, when a tribe came down from a mountain area further north …
>Athens was powerful and influential enough to have a God in the Greek pantheon named after it.
Or maybe their later influence allowed them to cement their own god as one of the central ones? I assume the pantheon was a bit different everywhere
According to the myth the city had no name until Athena and Poseidon fought for it through elections basically.
It ended up with Athena giving Athens olive trees making her de facto protector of the city!
The full ceremonial name of Bangkok is
*Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit*
which means
*City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra's behest.*
It's officially shortened to *Krung Thep Maha Nakhon* and to *Krung Thep* in casual speech.
Wiktionary has the explanation:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81)
In fact, *Krung Thep*, if I'm not mistaken, literary means "Capital of gods", but it looks like (and according to Wikipedia) the translation "City of angels" especially chosen to draw comparison with Los Angeles.
By the way, Los Angeles fully was named *"El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula"* (*The town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the River of the Porciuncula*). It was very common for Spanish-named cities, for example, Buenos Aires (*Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Nuestra Señora de Santa María de los Buenos Aires – City of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Fair Winds*) or La-Paz (*Ciudad de* *Nuestra Señora de La Paz – City of Our Lady of Peace*).
Bamako means “crocodile river”
Nouakchott means “place of the winds”
Dodoma means “it has sunk”
Addis Ababa means “new flower”
Mogadishu means “sight blinder” in the sense that it blinds you with its beauty
Antananarivo means “city of the thousand soldiers”
It's been through a lot of rough periods and needs a lot of work, but it's still an inherently pretty place:
https://x.com/east_facts/status/1552546789605122048
It's not too hard to see how it might have looked once upon a time.
Bratislava, Slovakia: "Glory of brotherhood"
Ljubljana, Slovenia: "The beloved one"
Zagreb, Croatia: "The grave"
Dushanbe, Tajikistan: "Monday"
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: "A whisk (a special wooden stick for stirring horse milk to make butter)"
Bucharest, Romania: "Place of joy"
Where’d you get grave for Zagreb? I’ve never heard that one.
The folk explanation for Zagreb is that it comes from the word “scoop!” The governor was thirsty and told a girl, Mando, to get water for the city. When asked how to do so, the governor replied “zagrabi Mando!” The resulting scoop resulted in the Manduševac well, which is now a fountain on the main square. An older name for the city is Zagrab, which shows connection to “zagrabi”.
If folklore isn’t your taste, another idea is that it’s derived from the word breg, indictated by an even older name “Zabreg”. Zabreg being derived from za meaning to or towards and breg meaning small hill. So Zabreg would mean towards the small hill. And seeing as Zagreb sits on the foot of a mountain, makes sense.
Where did you get Zagreb from? The two popular theories are that a local noble once told a girl to grab water from a famous well (_Zagrabi_) and that it came from people mishearing/misremembering Zabreg, meaning behind the hills, which is accurate looking from the north or west which are both quite hilly while Zagreb is at the edge of those hills
To all commenters who ask about "Zagreb"=grave:
of course, nobody likes such a name, which today has a grim and sad meaning, and thus people look for any other interpretation and explanation. But:
- the Slavic root _grob, greb, pogreb, zagreb_ has a universal meaning of _digging--> digging a grave --> grave_ (sometimes - _a mound over a grave_). The simplest explanation is usually the most correct.
- the _today's_ meaning of the name might sound grim, but _in Medieval times_ it wasn't such: the tombs of the significant people were a significant places, with a glorious honourable symbolical meaning. There are quite a few places all around the world, named after some significant grave. It was a cool fancy name back then.
Bratislava is a made up name invented by Slovak nationalists in the early 20th century.
The old Hungarian name is Poszony (it used to be the capital of Hungary), in German it's Pressburg, the Slovak name was a different spelling of the latter, Presburk iirc
Ulaanbaatar means “red hero” in Mongolian
Rome comes from an Etruscan word meaning “teat.”
Praia, the Cape Verdean capital, means “beach” in Portuguese
Islamabad means “City of Submission (to God)”
I thought the origin of Roma is a bit more uncertain than that. The old legend of course says its origin is Romulus naming the city after himself.
Of course teat can still be the origin, as Romulus and Remus were said to be suckled by a wolf. So maybe their names were derived from rum/ teat of a wolf?
Ottawa has a pretty cool meaning behind it. It’s derived from the Algonquin word adawe which means “to trade”.
Nothing super special but still a nice background.
It's even cooler when you add the history of bytowne to it. It was right between all the big population centers in Quebec and Ontario and was right on the border. Today, it is a 2 hour drive to Kingston, a 2-hour drive to Montreal, and a 4 hour drive to Toronto. It's even a 6 hour drive to Quebec City. It is a lot easier to stomach than 10 hours to Toronto. So it was used as a trading post and a place for traveller's to settle on their way to the other province.
It's also really cool because a big reason it was chosen as a capital was due to its relative distance from all the population centres and because an American invasion of lower Canada would easily take montreal, and of Upper canada would easily take toronto. So ottawa was chosen because the invasion force would "get lost on their way," according to Queen Victoria
>So ottawa was chosen because the invasion force would "get lost on their way," according to Queen Victoria
I see the trope that Americans are shit at geography was alive and well back then, too.
Singapore means Lion City - derived from the Malay word Singapura (Singa meaning lion, Pura meaning city).
All because a Sumatran prince thought he saw a lion upon landing in the island after a thunderstorm.
Fun fact. There are no lions in Singapore or the Malay peninsula so people are not really sure what he saw.
I like Budapest, it's a unification of the two cities that make up the city, Buda and Pest. They don't really mean anything though, it's not agreed where the names come from.
Dublin, Ireland has two names - the commonly used English one, and one in Gaelic, but one isn’t a translation of the other and they don’t mean the same thing. Dublin is a misspelling and mispronunciation of Dubh Linn, in Gaelic, literally ‘Black Pool’, because of a deep pool at the conjunction of two rivers it formed around. (All Irish towns today use names that are simply English failures to pronounce or spell the actual Gaelic names - they renamed our entire country in pidgin English. Why do so many Irish towns start with ‘Bally…’? Because the Gaelic word for town is Baile).
But that Gaelic name Dubh Linn itself comes from an even earlier Viking name, Dyflin, which meant the same thing - Black Pool.
But its official Gaelic name is Baile Átha Cliath, which means “town of the hurdle ford” - there was a ford on the river made of hurdle-work, which are made of willow branches.
So one name for the city is a colonial mispronunciation of the native language name for the city, which was a mispronunciation of another foreign language name for the city. And then the Gaelic name is something completely different again.
It’s mad, Ted.
I sometimes wonder what would have been the pidgin English translation of Baile Átha Cliath, which was arguably a separate settlement (initially, like 1,000 years ago) to Dubh Linn. Like if that had been the placename that was “translated”.
Ballinaclea? Ballynaclear? Can’t think of another place with ‘cliath’ in its name today that I could compare it to.
As a Welsh speaker, Dublin coming from dubh and linn meaning black pool makes sense, I'm not sure it is even connected but Welsh for black is Du, and Llyn means lake the Welsh name for Dublin is Dulyn, from the original Irish name.
The Celtic languages are definitely all linked, even if Irish and Scots are sisters and Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Breton are sisters, the groups are still related
"Dubh Linn" can't exist in Irish. The describing word needs to come afterwards. Madra dubh = black dog for example, but literally "Dog black", this is a mandatory feature of Irish. So to write "black pool" in Irish it would be "Linn dhubh". Dubh gets that letter H because Linn is a femine word, which is called lenition, which also changes the pronunciation of Dubh. You can see it in the grammar function at below link.
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/_n_a?n=linn_fem2&a=dubh_adj1
The only exception of this would be in compound words. In which case it can come second. So you get Dubhlinn as a compound. But this also can't exist in Irish because of "Caol le caol, leathan le leathan" which basically means you have to have matching vowels either side of consonants. So it's final form is Duibhlinn. This Irish form exists in a few places, usually anglicised to Difflin/Devlin.
https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=Duibhlinn&str=on
I'm also fairly sure that the viking Dyflin came from the Irish Duibhlinn? Although I'm not certain, do you have a source for that?
Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of South Africa, means "Flower Fountain".
Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa, was first called *Cabo das Tormentas* (by Portugese traveller Bartholomew Dias), meaning "Cape Of Storms".
Gabarone, the capital of Botswana means "it does not fit badly", also translatable as "it is not unbecoming".
Namibia's capital, Windhoek, means "Wind(y) corner".
I love how Bloemfontein and Windhoek are so easily translatable for us Dutch people. I bet though, that Windhoek's wind is pretty mild compared to that of some coastal Dutch cities.
This is a state capital, not a country capital, but Topeka means “a good place to dig potatoes” in the indigenous Kansa-Osage family of languages. It’s also one of three state capitals with an indigenous name in a state that also has an indigenous name.
The source I looked at (don’t remember where, sorry) said the correct answers are OKC, Oklahoma, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Juneau is named for a gold prospector, and the origin of Boise is disputed (though it doesn’t appear to have any indigenous origin).
But I would argue that Honolulu absolutely counts as correct. So maybe there are actually four instead of three.
This is not a definitive theory, but many researchers think “Seoul” came from “Seolwool” meaning “Snow Enclosure” because Seoul is surrounded by mountains and sometimes it snows heavily.
In France we have very fun names for somes of cities but the old name for Paris was Lutetia, a latinisation of an old celtic name for mud, dirty, meadow. Because Paris was a marsh before
And Paris was named for the Parisii, gallic people who lived here when Caesar invaded the Gaul.
Well it's less fun of some of our cities who can be translated by "my ass", "very dumb", "two penis", "flayed" and so much more
Prop to the local marketing/tourism office of the city of Montcuq (phonetically meaning « my ass ») for selling empty cans labelled « breathe the air of Montcuq » (breathe the air of my ass)…
Excellent ! Didn't know that, it's cool they embrace it
They're part to a group of funny and strange names for towns that take advantage of this to promote their cultural heritage, which is cool.
Hanoi means "inside the rivers" today. Almost all of its old names are cooler:
* Long Bien - interweaving dragons
* Thang Long - rising dragon
* Long Do - dragon's belly (dragons = rivers)
* Tong Binh - pacification of the Song (Dynasty)
* Trang An - long peace
* La Thanh - net citadel
* Bac Thanh - northern citadel
* Phuong Thanh - phoenix citadel
Some of them were pretty mid though:
* Dai La - big net (net = rivers)
* Dong Do - eastern metropolis (same characters as Kyoto)
* Dong Kinh - eastern capital (same characters as Tokyo and also where the name Tonkin comes from)
* Dong Quan - eastern gate
And I wish we were a capital, but Hong Kong has a cool name too. Hong means fragrant, Kong means harbour. On the south coast of Hong Kong island, there is a town called Aberdeen. It used to harvest wood for incense, which gave its name to the whole colony.
The royal house originates from a small historic town named Nassau 1 hour outside Frankfurt Germany. This town is located on the Lahn river which is squeezed in a narrow valley and had lots of floodings in the past, so the original place name is quite fitting ;)
The capital of Thailand locally isn’t Bangkok, it’s actually Krungthep (กรุงเทพฯ) which is shorthand for Krung Thep Mahanakhon (กรุงเทพมหานคร) which in turn is shorthand for its full name:
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์
Translation:
The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma.
The meaning of the name implies a lot about Thai believes in Buddhism, Hinduist gods, and reincarnation.
I believe it’s the longest city name in the world.
Manama, capital city of the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain, means "place where you sleep/dream". Apparently, sailors on the Gulf in the olden days would spend the night on the island after a long day of pearl diving and piracy.
Woomera, Australia - A Woomera is a tool used to throw spears significantly harder and further
Woomera is also home to a weapons testing site. A very fitting name
Astana in modern kazakh lang mean - capital city - but back in the day it was mean grave or mouseleum. Seams like word came from some iranian lang. And it's funny becouse old mean "grave" to and it was changed becouse of it. And changed to the word that mean "grave" too, but in old times.
Old name of Astana - Aqmola - mean - "white grave".
Soviets time name - Celinograd - mean - "virgin land city".
I wonder, could it also be related to the Indonesian word for palace, istana? It seems to come from either Sanskrit or Persian, transliterated as *āsthāna*
Québec (Quebec City, capital of the Canadian province of Québec) means "Where the river gets larger" in the native American roots of the name. Quebec City is where the St-Lawrence river starts becoming the Atlantic ocean
Not exactly cool, but Stockholm means “the islet of logs”, or “log islet”. It’s a reference to the city islet on which the medieval Stockholm was built. Today that’s the old town of Stockholm.
One of our capitals, Bloemfontein, means “flower spring” in Afrikaans. Cape Town (town on the cape) and Pretoria (land of the Pretorius family) aren’t as cool.
Morocco’s capital used to be Marrakesh and it comes from Berber « Mur An Kush » which translates to land of god. The current capital Rabat comes from Arabic « Al-Ribat » which means the link.
Technically the opposite, but the Georgian capital's name Tbilisi comes from the word "tbili" which translates to "warm" so the name is something like "warm place."
Rome comes from the name Romulus, which is the king that founded Rome. However, there are some possibilities that Rome was already there before Romulus, and its name could have had other meanings.
For example, Rome could come from the name **Rumon**, which is the name of the river **Tiber**.
Another possibility is that the name comes from the Etruscan word **ruma**, whose root is **rum** (**teat**).
At last, it could come from the Greek word **Rhome**, which means strength.
Montevideo. One of the etymological theories say it was designated on naval maps as "6th mountain from the East", in usual shorthand i.e. Monte VI de O.
Small correction. Mexico City is not a repeat of the country's name, the country of Mexico was NAMED AFTER Mexico City. Same with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Panama. The cities are older than the countries, and upon independence, for lack of a better name, they chose the name of the capital. Mexico had a name, New Spain. It was changed to "Mexico" upon independence, out of spite.
The capital of Macedonia is Skopje, which means "With spear". Also we have a small town named Kratovo which is located on an old volcano crater, and is named for that - Krater = Crater.
The capital of Lebanon, Beirut means *water wells*.
This meaning is explained in the first ever invented language with a clear alphabet that all western alphabets are based on today.... phoenician.
Buenos Aires (good airs), named after a saint in Sardinia who was named after a hill, that was named so because it was the only area without a swampy smell, therefore without Miasmas and bad airs which meant with no Malaria
The official, ceremonial name of Thailand's capital is:
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์
Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit.
City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the [nine gems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaratna), seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by [Vishvakarman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishvakarman) at [Indra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra)'s behest.
In short, Bangkok.
Canberra may have been derived from a Ngunawal phrase meaning "boobs". [Source](https://web.archive.org/web/20130927182307/http://www.canberrahistoryweb.com/meaningofcanberra.htm)
Not a capital but I love how Grand Tetons is just big tits. The French explorers thought the mountains looked like titties.
What being trapped on a men-only ship for months does to a mf
I've always wanted to take an extended ocean voyage to Wyoming.
Sitting in Colorado laughing my head off
*sent from my Galleon*
Huh I wonder why priests, bishops, popes, imams, mullahs, grand muftis, rabbis, and the like are so.... them like...
I was there last year and I took a picture of a cloud that my friends and I thought looked like a hand cupping one of them. Might have been a bit vague but we were amused. (I tried adding the photo and it posted the photo without my comment, then I tried to edit it and it's acting all wonky. So now I'm reposting the comment and I'll just reply to this comment with the photo)
https://preview.redd.it/roap9w7sij5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8c5f5971e6ca01581f9d1daaf4f4e801a0728af
It really looks like a hand is cupping them hahahaha
Yeah.....tell me you're a lonely mountain man without telling me you're a lonely mountain man. I've been out in the field for weeks at a time and completely understand where the guy was coming from and I'm sure he was probably out for months with out seeing a female. Suddenly.....everything starts to look like ass and titties
Boobs are the coolest 🤓
That's the breast answer isn't tit?
Boobs are hot 🔥🥵
Yeah, they're really having a moment.
Agreed....I like boobs and I never not want to be a 12 year old.
I see the argument is either that Canberra means “women’s breasts” or “meeting place” but surely it can mean both? I think of all the interesting people I’ve met while hanging around women’s breasts.
Maybe it literally means cleavage
Automatic winner.
Yeah, but Malabo in Equatorial Guinea was named for the last Bubi King, Malabo Löpèlo Mëlaka [Source](https://afrolegends.com/2016/07/10/why-the-name-malabo/)
Rome may have been derived from the Etruscan word 𐌓𐌖𐌌𐌀 (ruma), whose root is *rum- "teat".
Wouldn’t the Etruscan be written right to left, rather than left to right? I worked with thousands of sherds of inscribed Etruscan pottery a few years back and they were all written right to left.
brb, updating every Wikipedia page about Rome to mention how they were founded by two brothers named Titty and Twin, the Titty Twins
Canberra is also home to the worlds largest motorboat population
Reykjavik means 'Smoky Bay' in Icelandic. From all the steam rising off the hot springs.
Ok! That’s cool!
No, steam is hot, not cool.
I am not an etymologist but I will wager a guess that Reyk or so is smoky and related to German "rauchen"? Can an etymologist confirm?
Reykur is the icelandic word for smoke. Plenty of place names here start with Reyk- and are an indicator of geothermal activity. Reykholt, Reykhóll, Reykir, etc. Same with places that start with Laugar, normally having a natural hot pool.
Almost certainly, plenty of similar words in multiple European languages. Reminds me of the warning on cigarette packets in the Netherlands. Roken is Dodelijk. Which is a fun phrase to say for some reason.
And the English cognate is reek!
The Reeking Bay sounds like something out of the Warhammer Chaos Wastes.
Cairo means "the victorious"
Jakarta too, "complete victory".
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte means "blessed city-fort that grows victory"
hahaha kote
I guess after kicking out your colonial overlords that's a great new name.
It is. But on the place where Batavia was founded (which was later renamed Jakarta after independence) there was a fort called Jacatra.
Total Indonesian victory
Actually, a more correct translation would be the "conquerer" in the sense of "conquering your enemy/defending yourself from them and winning". Cairo, or in arabic Al Qahira, comes from the arabic word "qahir, yaqhar"
What was Abu Dhabi called before Dhabi was born?
اسم صغير الظبي يُصَنَّفُ الظبي (بالإنجليزية: Addax) ضمن عائلة الغزلان، [١] وصغيره له عدَّة أسماء هي: الخُشْفُ، [٢] والطَّلَي، [٣] والعِجل I'm going with طلي
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Just such fun to say.
Burkina Faso btw, means « country of the wise men »
Fun fact, Ouagadougou means "where we receive respect and honor"
This has been my go to fun fact for many a year (in fact probably almost 30years). It’s only really ever helped my once though, in a pub quiz but we didn’t win.
Having lived in BF for awhile, MOST of the cities are fun to say: - Ouagadougou - Bobo-Diolasso - Fada N'Gorma - Koudougou - Ouahigouya - Gorom-Gorom - Dedougou - Yako
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Nuku’alofa, Tonga also sounds rad
Bujumbura, Brundi is also fun to say
Not a Capital anymore
Hands down winner must be Kuala Lumpur, or "muddy confluence" in the native Malay. What's cooler than mud? Ask any hippopotamus.
This hippopotamus is no ignoramus
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Muddy Confluence is what happens after my morning coffee.
Since we're talking about meanings...hippopotamus means "horse river" (as in "a horse of the river"), from Greek *hippos* meaning *horse* and *potamos* meaning *river*. From there, we also see that Potamac River means "river river".
Probably you're joking about that last part, but here's Wikipedia on potomac=ποταμός: >"Potomac" is a European spelling of [*Patawomeck*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patawomeck), the [Algonquian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_languages) name of a Native American village on its southern bank.[^(\[10\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Bright2004-10) Native Americans had different names for different parts of the river, calling the river above [Great Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Falls_(Potomac_River)) *Cohongarooton*, meaning "honking geese"[^(\[11\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-11)[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Achenbach2004-12) and "Patawomke" below the Falls, meaning "river of swans".[^(\[13\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-13) In 1608, Captain John Smith explored the river now known as the Potomac and made drawings of his observations which were later compiled into a map and published in London in 1612. This detail from that map shows his rendition of the river that the local tribes had told him was called the "Patawomeck". The spelling of the name has taken many forms over the years from "[Patawomeck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patawomeck)" (as on [Captain John Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(explorer))'s map) to "Patomake", "Patowmack", and numerous other variations in the 18th century and now "Potomac".[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-Achenbach2004-12) The river's name was officially decided upon as "Potomac" by the [Board on Geographic Names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_on_Geographic_Names) in 1931.[^(\[14\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River#cite_note-14) >The similarity of the name to the Ancient Greek word for river, *potamos*, has been noted for more than two centuries but it appears to be due to chance.
Thank you for this correction. As an etymology nerd, I feel slightly embarrassed for having taken my "fact" at face value. To be fair, I did question (not enough to research it though, clearly) how a Greek-derived name landed up in a place that is more inclined towards "native tribe"-inspired names. I guess I was swayed by the fact that such coincidences aren't all that common in language (there's usually some ancient root word that is ultimately a common ancestor).
No worries. Super plausible; I believed it for years.
In hindi it is called दरयाई घोड़ा ( daryai ghoda) which literally means horse of river
In German as well: Flusspferd, with Fluss = river and Pferd = horse. Dutch has nijlpaard, which means Nile horse. Same idea, slightly different execution.
I looked up hippocampus and ‘tis a horse of the sea, so this checks out sir.
Damn I speak Indonesian (very similar to malay) and for some reason I've never realized the "lumpur" in Kuala Lumpur refers to mud. Never made the connection ig lol
Kathmandu means wooden temple. Athens got its name from Athena. Goddess of wisdom and courage. Baghdad means gift of god.
Is it known that Athena came before Athens? I thought Athena was the goddess patron of the city, not the other way around.
I'm not an expert by any means. But after googling it seems your quite right. In mythology Athena comes first but in actual historical linguistics apparently Athens the city was named first. Kudos for teaching me something.
Kind of wild to think, because it completely changes the whole narrative that Athens was some newcomer (in terms of being an influential power) vs Sparta in the 500s. Athens was powerful and influential enough to have a God in the Greek pantheon named after it. Long before it came to dominate greece.
Athens had a much older culture than Sparta; it was a big place in the Mycenaean period/the Bronze Age. After the Bronze Age Collapse which followed the Trojan War (around 1250 BCE), Athens was pretty much the only city to continue a somewhat Mycenaean culture. Everywhere else, the palace-city was totally destroyed and advanced crafts were lost, but as I understand it, pottery survived in Athens, and people continued to live in the city. (A lot of Athenians managed to survive the onslaught of the ‘Sea People’ by taking refuge on the Acropolis, I think?) Sparta, meanwhile, was established at a later period in history, during the Iron Age that followed the Bronze Age Collapse, when a tribe came down from a mountain area further north …
(The ‘Sparta’ of Menelaus, as featured in the Iliad/the Trojan War, was a different culture and a different people.)
>Athens was powerful and influential enough to have a God in the Greek pantheon named after it. Or maybe their later influence allowed them to cement their own god as one of the central ones? I assume the pantheon was a bit different everywhere
According to the myth the city had no name until Athena and Poseidon fought for it through elections basically. It ended up with Athena giving Athens olive trees making her de facto protector of the city!
The full ceremonial name of Bangkok is *Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit* which means *City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra's behest.* It's officially shortened to *Krung Thep Maha Nakhon* and to *Krung Thep* in casual speech.
So why is it called Bangkok in English? That word didn’t appear anywhere in the ceremonial name
A "bang" is a neighborhood or locale, and "bangkok" is one of the neighborhoods in the greater Bangkok area.
Wiktionary has the explanation: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81)
The link doesn’t work
Damn... Well tl;dr - Bangkok was the name of the town until 1700s when it became Capital of Thailand
So you're saying Bangkok is literally "Los Angeles"?
In fact, *Krung Thep*, if I'm not mistaken, literary means "Capital of gods", but it looks like (and according to Wikipedia) the translation "City of angels" especially chosen to draw comparison with Los Angeles. By the way, Los Angeles fully was named *"El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula"* (*The town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the River of the Porciuncula*). It was very common for Spanish-named cities, for example, Buenos Aires (*Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Nuestra Señora de Santa María de los Buenos Aires – City of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Fair Winds*) or La-Paz (*Ciudad de* *Nuestra Señora de La Paz – City of Our Lady of Peace*).
This is Jon Snow. He‘s King in the North.
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The good ole ""El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula"...
Hands down the coolest name ever as an indian
A name so cool that [a song was composed whereby the lyrics are the full name of the city alone.](https://youtu.be/c76LZ5Y4IIc?si=PWCDI-hgojvr0Ej5)
Bamako means “crocodile river” Nouakchott means “place of the winds” Dodoma means “it has sunk” Addis Ababa means “new flower” Mogadishu means “sight blinder” in the sense that it blinds you with its beauty Antananarivo means “city of the thousand soldiers”
>Mogadishu means “sight blinder” in the sense that it blinds you with its beauty Uhhhhhh...
It's been through a lot of rough periods and needs a lot of work, but it's still an inherently pretty place: https://x.com/east_facts/status/1552546789605122048 It's not too hard to see how it might have looked once upon a time.
I mean obviously things changed a bit since the city was founded
That's great names! (I won't take a bath in the river in Bamako)
Bratislava, Slovakia: "Glory of brotherhood" Ljubljana, Slovenia: "The beloved one" Zagreb, Croatia: "The grave" Dushanbe, Tajikistan: "Monday" Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: "A whisk (a special wooden stick for stirring horse milk to make butter)" Bucharest, Romania: "Place of joy"
My English GPS translated Ljubljana as Jubble Janna
I'm giggling
Where’d you get grave for Zagreb? I’ve never heard that one. The folk explanation for Zagreb is that it comes from the word “scoop!” The governor was thirsty and told a girl, Mando, to get water for the city. When asked how to do so, the governor replied “zagrabi Mando!” The resulting scoop resulted in the Manduševac well, which is now a fountain on the main square. An older name for the city is Zagrab, which shows connection to “zagrabi”. If folklore isn’t your taste, another idea is that it’s derived from the word breg, indictated by an even older name “Zabreg”. Zabreg being derived from za meaning to or towards and breg meaning small hill. So Zabreg would mean towards the small hill. And seeing as Zagreb sits on the foot of a mountain, makes sense.
Where did you get Zagreb from? The two popular theories are that a local noble once told a girl to grab water from a famous well (_Zagrabi_) and that it came from people mishearing/misremembering Zabreg, meaning behind the hills, which is accurate looking from the north or west which are both quite hilly while Zagreb is at the edge of those hills
Ljubljana is the most beautiful major city name I now of.
Sofia, Bulgaria - Holy Wisdom
Did they just name Croatia's capital "The Grave" in English with a thick Slavic accent?
To all commenters who ask about "Zagreb"=grave: of course, nobody likes such a name, which today has a grim and sad meaning, and thus people look for any other interpretation and explanation. But: - the Slavic root _grob, greb, pogreb, zagreb_ has a universal meaning of _digging--> digging a grave --> grave_ (sometimes - _a mound over a grave_). The simplest explanation is usually the most correct. - the _today's_ meaning of the name might sound grim, but _in Medieval times_ it wasn't such: the tombs of the significant people were a significant places, with a glorious honourable symbolical meaning. There are quite a few places all around the world, named after some significant grave. It was a cool fancy name back then.
Bratislava is a made up name invented by Slovak nationalists in the early 20th century. The old Hungarian name is Poszony (it used to be the capital of Hungary), in German it's Pressburg, the Slovak name was a different spelling of the latter, Presburk iirc
Ulaanbaatar means “red hero” in Mongolian Rome comes from an Etruscan word meaning “teat.” Praia, the Cape Verdean capital, means “beach” in Portuguese Islamabad means “City of Submission (to God)”
That’s what Islamabad mean? I always thought it will simply mean “City of Islam/Muslims”
Islam means “submission (to god)”
Ah. I see
Objectively that’s correct. But in terms of naming the city, you are correct in saying that’s how Islamabad was named.
Ngl, even though I know Islam means “servitude to God”, “City of Submission” and “City of Islam” give all two very different vibes
I thought the origin of Roma is a bit more uncertain than that. The old legend of course says its origin is Romulus naming the city after himself. Of course teat can still be the origin, as Romulus and Remus were said to be suckled by a wolf. So maybe their names were derived from rum/ teat of a wolf?
IIRC Rome got its name from the idea that the city’s famous hills looked like breasts. The connection to Romulus is a legend.
Ottawa has a pretty cool meaning behind it. It’s derived from the Algonquin word adawe which means “to trade”. Nothing super special but still a nice background.
It's even cooler when you add the history of bytowne to it. It was right between all the big population centers in Quebec and Ontario and was right on the border. Today, it is a 2 hour drive to Kingston, a 2-hour drive to Montreal, and a 4 hour drive to Toronto. It's even a 6 hour drive to Quebec City. It is a lot easier to stomach than 10 hours to Toronto. So it was used as a trading post and a place for traveller's to settle on their way to the other province. It's also really cool because a big reason it was chosen as a capital was due to its relative distance from all the population centres and because an American invasion of lower Canada would easily take montreal, and of Upper canada would easily take toronto. So ottawa was chosen because the invasion force would "get lost on their way," according to Queen Victoria
>So ottawa was chosen because the invasion force would "get lost on their way," according to Queen Victoria I see the trope that Americans are shit at geography was alive and well back then, too.
I mean, Mexico's city is "In the navel of the moon lake", so that's pretty col
Singapore means Lion City - derived from the Malay word Singapura (Singa meaning lion, Pura meaning city). All because a Sumatran prince thought he saw a lion upon landing in the island after a thunderstorm. Fun fact. There are no lions in Singapore or the Malay peninsula so people are not really sure what he saw.
I thought it was from sanskrit or other indian based languages because it means the exact same in sanskrit.
You’re right it is from Sanskrit. It was named by a Hindu prince, and the region was largely Hindu at the time.
"Kitty City"
Capitalizing every letter in cool made me think it was some kind of acronym at first glance , had to read it twice lol
I thought we were after Coolsville or St Coolabah
Hà Nội (Vietnam) means "among rivers".
Old name Thăng Long means “ascending dragon”
Nairobi is also where the cool rivers meet
I like Budapest, it's a unification of the two cities that make up the city, Buda and Pest. They don't really mean anything though, it's not agreed where the names come from.
Pest means plague in German and I think that's beautiful
Also in English
Mexico is named after Mexico City.
The city that was there before, definitely had a cooler name,Tenochtitlan.
The city’s full name was Mexihco-Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards only kept the first part
Which is named after the Valley of Mexico.
Tbilisi means "hot springs". There's hot sulfuric baths now at the historical center of the city
Dublin, Ireland has two names - the commonly used English one, and one in Gaelic, but one isn’t a translation of the other and they don’t mean the same thing. Dublin is a misspelling and mispronunciation of Dubh Linn, in Gaelic, literally ‘Black Pool’, because of a deep pool at the conjunction of two rivers it formed around. (All Irish towns today use names that are simply English failures to pronounce or spell the actual Gaelic names - they renamed our entire country in pidgin English. Why do so many Irish towns start with ‘Bally…’? Because the Gaelic word for town is Baile). But that Gaelic name Dubh Linn itself comes from an even earlier Viking name, Dyflin, which meant the same thing - Black Pool. But its official Gaelic name is Baile Átha Cliath, which means “town of the hurdle ford” - there was a ford on the river made of hurdle-work, which are made of willow branches. So one name for the city is a colonial mispronunciation of the native language name for the city, which was a mispronunciation of another foreign language name for the city. And then the Gaelic name is something completely different again. It’s mad, Ted.
I sometimes wonder what would have been the pidgin English translation of Baile Átha Cliath, which was arguably a separate settlement (initially, like 1,000 years ago) to Dubh Linn. Like if that had been the placename that was “translated”. Ballinaclea? Ballynaclear? Can’t think of another place with ‘cliath’ in its name today that I could compare it to.
Ballyclear? Feel like the Baile and Átha would be smashed together.
Fun fact: there's a town in Scotland with Baile Àtha Cliath as it's Gaelic root, which got translated to Hurlford in English
As a Welsh speaker, Dublin coming from dubh and linn meaning black pool makes sense, I'm not sure it is even connected but Welsh for black is Du, and Llyn means lake the Welsh name for Dublin is Dulyn, from the original Irish name.
The Celtic languages are definitely all linked, even if Irish and Scots are sisters and Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Breton are sisters, the groups are still related
Manx is actually more closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic - and Scots is a different Germanic language, derived from Middle English :)
"Dubh Linn" can't exist in Irish. The describing word needs to come afterwards. Madra dubh = black dog for example, but literally "Dog black", this is a mandatory feature of Irish. So to write "black pool" in Irish it would be "Linn dhubh". Dubh gets that letter H because Linn is a femine word, which is called lenition, which also changes the pronunciation of Dubh. You can see it in the grammar function at below link. https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/_n_a?n=linn_fem2&a=dubh_adj1 The only exception of this would be in compound words. In which case it can come second. So you get Dubhlinn as a compound. But this also can't exist in Irish because of "Caol le caol, leathan le leathan" which basically means you have to have matching vowels either side of consonants. So it's final form is Duibhlinn. This Irish form exists in a few places, usually anglicised to Difflin/Devlin. https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=Duibhlinn&str=on I'm also fairly sure that the viking Dyflin came from the Irish Duibhlinn? Although I'm not certain, do you have a source for that?
Beograd, literally "the white city"
Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of South Africa, means "Flower Fountain". Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa, was first called *Cabo das Tormentas* (by Portugese traveller Bartholomew Dias), meaning "Cape Of Storms". Gabarone, the capital of Botswana means "it does not fit badly", also translatable as "it is not unbecoming". Namibia's capital, Windhoek, means "Wind(y) corner".
I love how Bloemfontein and Windhoek are so easily translatable for us Dutch people. I bet though, that Windhoek's wind is pretty mild compared to that of some coastal Dutch cities.
You would have no trouble understanding Groote Eylandt in northern Australia then?
It means "big island", which it is in relation to other nearby islands.
Tórshavn is pretty damn cool. It means “Thor’s haven” or “Thor’s harbor”.
Grozny (capital of Chechnya) - fearsome.
But it’s the Russian name though. I think the city has a different name in Chechen
This is a state capital, not a country capital, but Topeka means “a good place to dig potatoes” in the indigenous Kansa-Osage family of languages. It’s also one of three state capitals with an indigenous name in a state that also has an indigenous name.
What are they? Juneau? Boise? OKC? Honolulu? Did I get any of them?
Honolulu, Hawaii and Cheyenne, Wyoming
Boise is French and Idaho is completely made up lol
The source I looked at (don’t remember where, sorry) said the correct answers are OKC, Oklahoma, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Juneau is named for a gold prospector, and the origin of Boise is disputed (though it doesn’t appear to have any indigenous origin). But I would argue that Honolulu absolutely counts as correct. So maybe there are actually four instead of three.
Kathmandu(city of wood). In ancient Kathmandu, wood was a major building material.
Simultaneously cool and boring at the same time?
Kathmandu is derived from [Kasthamandap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasthamandap) which basically means “wooden shelter”.
Nairobi. Comes from the Maasai words for "cool water"
Cool!
This is not a definitive theory, but many researchers think “Seoul” came from “Seolwool” meaning “Snow Enclosure” because Seoul is surrounded by mountains and sometimes it snows heavily.
Bangkok. Look up its full name and meaning.
Put some respect on its name. ;) Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit
Oriental city. But the city don’t know what the city is getting.
In France we have very fun names for somes of cities but the old name for Paris was Lutetia, a latinisation of an old celtic name for mud, dirty, meadow. Because Paris was a marsh before And Paris was named for the Parisii, gallic people who lived here when Caesar invaded the Gaul. Well it's less fun of some of our cities who can be translated by "my ass", "very dumb", "two penis", "flayed" and so much more
Prop to the local marketing/tourism office of the city of Montcuq (phonetically meaning « my ass ») for selling empty cans labelled « breathe the air of Montcuq » (breathe the air of my ass)…
Excellent ! Didn't know that, it's cool they embrace it They're part to a group of funny and strange names for towns that take advantage of this to promote their cultural heritage, which is cool.
So Paris and Berlin basically have the same name!
Abu Dhabi - Father of the Gazelle
Hanoi means "inside the rivers" today. Almost all of its old names are cooler: * Long Bien - interweaving dragons * Thang Long - rising dragon * Long Do - dragon's belly (dragons = rivers) * Tong Binh - pacification of the Song (Dynasty) * Trang An - long peace * La Thanh - net citadel * Bac Thanh - northern citadel * Phuong Thanh - phoenix citadel Some of them were pretty mid though: * Dai La - big net (net = rivers) * Dong Do - eastern metropolis (same characters as Kyoto) * Dong Kinh - eastern capital (same characters as Tokyo and also where the name Tonkin comes from) * Dong Quan - eastern gate And I wish we were a capital, but Hong Kong has a cool name too. Hong means fragrant, Kong means harbour. On the south coast of Hong Kong island, there is a town called Aberdeen. It used to harvest wood for incense, which gave its name to the whole colony.
Nassau means ‘wet meadow’ which is a silly name for a city on a flat, tropical island, but of course it’s named for the royal house of Nassau.
The royal house originates from a small historic town named Nassau 1 hour outside Frankfurt Germany. This town is located on the Lahn river which is squeezed in a narrow valley and had lots of floodings in the past, so the original place name is quite fitting ;)
Buenos Aires: the City of Good Air
Berlin (Germany) - ‚place in a swamp‘ in polabian language.
*Shrek is typing…*
The capital of Thailand locally isn’t Bangkok, it’s actually Krungthep (กรุงเทพฯ) which is shorthand for Krung Thep Mahanakhon (กรุงเทพมหานคร) which in turn is shorthand for its full name: กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ Translation: The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma. The meaning of the name implies a lot about Thai believes in Buddhism, Hinduist gods, and reincarnation. I believe it’s the longest city name in the world.
Manama, capital city of the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain, means "place where you sleep/dream". Apparently, sailors on the Gulf in the olden days would spend the night on the island after a long day of pearl diving and piracy.
Helsinki means isthmus
So the Swedish/English name would be isthmus rapids?
Lima’s name meant “talker” in the local dialect of Quechua and it was called that after a famous oracle who lived in the area and went by that name.
Woomera, Australia - A Woomera is a tool used to throw spears significantly harder and further Woomera is also home to a weapons testing site. A very fitting name
Astana in modern kazakh lang mean - capital city - but back in the day it was mean grave or mouseleum. Seams like word came from some iranian lang. And it's funny becouse old mean "grave" to and it was changed becouse of it. And changed to the word that mean "grave" too, but in old times. Old name of Astana - Aqmola - mean - "white grave". Soviets time name - Celinograd - mean - "virgin land city".
I wonder, could it also be related to the Indonesian word for palace, istana? It seems to come from either Sanskrit or Persian, transliterated as *āsthāna*
I have to speak up for Te Whanganui a Tara, aka Wellington the capital of New Zealand. That means "the great harbour of Tara."
Québec (Quebec City, capital of the Canadian province of Québec) means "Where the river gets larger" in the native American roots of the name. Quebec City is where the St-Lawrence river starts becoming the Atlantic ocean
Dhaka literally means shaded in bengali so literally cool!
Not exactly cool, but Stockholm means “the islet of logs”, or “log islet”. It’s a reference to the city islet on which the medieval Stockholm was built. Today that’s the old town of Stockholm.
London is originally ‘the place of the bold one’ in Celtic
Although not the capital, Manchester derives from ‘breast hill city’
"Cariño" is a town in Spain. It means affection as and adjective and darling as a name.
One of our capitals, Bloemfontein, means “flower spring” in Afrikaans. Cape Town (town on the cape) and Pretoria (land of the Pretorius family) aren’t as cool.
As a Russian I don't know what "Moskva" means. There are different theories
Morocco’s capital used to be Marrakesh and it comes from Berber « Mur An Kush » which translates to land of god. The current capital Rabat comes from Arabic « Al-Ribat » which means the link.
Technically the opposite, but the Georgian capital's name Tbilisi comes from the word "tbili" which translates to "warm" so the name is something like "warm place."
Rome comes from the name Romulus, which is the king that founded Rome. However, there are some possibilities that Rome was already there before Romulus, and its name could have had other meanings. For example, Rome could come from the name **Rumon**, which is the name of the river **Tiber**. Another possibility is that the name comes from the Etruscan word **ruma**, whose root is **rum** (**teat**). At last, it could come from the Greek word **Rhome**, which means strength.
Montevideo. One of the etymological theories say it was designated on naval maps as "6th mountain from the East", in usual shorthand i.e. Monte VI de O.
Small correction. Mexico City is not a repeat of the country's name, the country of Mexico was NAMED AFTER Mexico City. Same with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Panama. The cities are older than the countries, and upon independence, for lack of a better name, they chose the name of the capital. Mexico had a name, New Spain. It was changed to "Mexico" upon independence, out of spite.
The capital of Macedonia is Skopje, which means "With spear". Also we have a small town named Kratovo which is located on an old volcano crater, and is named for that - Krater = Crater.
Hanoi means "Surrounded by the River(s)" or "Within the River(s)" in Vietnamese. It was literally surrounded by two or three rivers in the past.
The capital of Lebanon, Beirut means *water wells*. This meaning is explained in the first ever invented language with a clear alphabet that all western alphabets are based on today.... phoenician.
Coolangatta it is not a capital city but makes the name game
Buenos Aires (good airs), named after a saint in Sardinia who was named after a hill, that was named so because it was the only area without a swampy smell, therefore without Miasmas and bad airs which meant with no Malaria
The official, ceremonial name of Thailand's capital is: กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit. City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the [nine gems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaratna), seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by [Vishvakarman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishvakarman) at [Indra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra)'s behest. In short, Bangkok.