There are a lot of cities with strange sounding names, and they have to come from somewhere, right? Here's the place to enlighten everyone with your knowledge of city name origins.

Here are my two cents to start it off:

In times of trouble in the Roman empire, the Senate would appoint a dictator to take over for a period of six months. This dictator had total control of Rome for that time, similar to Marshall law, I would say. In one time of trouble, they appointed a civilian farmer to become dictator. He took power, and when the trouble was over, he abdicated his position and returned to farm his fields, having been in control for far shorter a time than six months. The name of this humble farmer was Cincinnatus, thus the city of Cincinnati.

Louisville was named in honor of King Louis XVI of France, as a way of thanking him for his assistance during the
American Revolution. Kentucky is taken from a native
American word, pronounced something like kan-too-kee, that is thought to have meant prairie.

And, er--which Marshall was it that that law you referred to was named after? Possibly Matt Dillon, as when in the Old West, the marshalls pretty much ruled some towns? (Yes, folks, I do know that not everyone reading this will get the reference. I just want to see what kind of responses this might lead to. Explanation gladly given if asked Private.)

Rome was named after Romulus - the twin brother of Remus - according to legend but the jury is still out on that one.

Paris was named after the famed Trojan general and leader who was the brother of Hector (slain by Achilles who was, in turn, killed by a single arrow to the heel by Paris).

Berlin was named after the site where thousands of Bears were supposed to have been slain in the dark ages.

The capital of North Dakota, Bismarck, was indeed named after the wily Prussian chancellor but not for of any commemorative reasons. The then governor (if it was a state then) named it in his honour in the hope of receiving monetary assistance (and perhaps an influx of German immigrants). This was never forthcoming.

Sydney was named after the intrepid English explorer Sydney Harbour-Bridge...... I think.

sapporo was named after the beer of the same name.

sorry.
seriously though, there is an area of tokyo called ebisu which is named after the brewery "yebisu", which still makes a beautiful beer.

Devils Lake ND, where I grew up, derives its name from the Indian name Miniwakan, which means "Bad Water" - undoubtedly a description of the lake's brackish water. Early explorers incorrectly translated the word to mean "Bad Spirit" which was bolstered by legends of drowned warriors -- from there it was an easy transition to Devils Lake.

The lake is spring-fed but has no natural outlet; for the last several years the lake has been rising, flooding farmland and nearby farm communities. There is talk of the town itself (pop. ~7500) being threatened in the coming years if relief in the form of diversion (or drought) isn't forthcoming. Bad spirits indeed.


update: I neglected to mention that one of the farm communities threatened by the rising waters is the community of Minnewaukan (see above). here is a link that shows some pictures: http://www.minnewaukan.com/flood.htm

I think I'll add another:

Atlanta, I assume comes from the name of the Greek heroine, Atalanta. The resemblance in the two names is so similar that I'd be surprised it this isn't the origin. Atalanta was abandoned at birth by her father, who wanted a son, and she became one of the Argonauts. She was unwilling to be married but consented that she would marry anyone who could beat her in a foot race. (Apparently she was pretty fast.) Aphrodite, the goddess of love, gave one of the suitors golden apples to put in Atalanta's path. She could not resist the apples because they were magical, and bent down to pick them up, letting the suitor, her destined husband, pass her.

I don't know what this has to do with a city in Georgia, but I guess it's just an interesting name.

Jazz (if I may call you by your "first" name):

You are correct that Cincinnatus was the ultimate root from which the name Cincinnati derived, but there was a very important intermediate step:

In 1790, General Arthur St. Clair, the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, arrived at Fort Washington and renamed the settlement Cincinnati in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary War Officers to which he belonged. The society took its name from the Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a partician farmer of ancient Rome who was pressed into military leadership several times to save the republic.

>>>And, er--which Marshall was it that that law you referred to was named after? Possibly Matt Dillon, as when in the Old West, the marshalls pretty much ruled some towns? (Yes, folks, I do know that not everyone reading this will get the reference. I just want to see what kind of responses this might lead to. Explanation gladly given if asked Private.)<<<

I'll have to marshal my thoughts on this one, but I do know that a two-ell marshall is generally a given name, while one-ell marshal is variously a military officer, an officer of the courts, or a peace officer. I think the law to which Jazz was refering is martial law -- temporary military rule imposed on civilians, especially in war time. A one-ell marshal is frequently named Shorty.

Reminds me of an Ogden Nash snippet:

A one-ell lama, he's a priest.
A two-ell llama, he's a beast.
But I will bet my silk pajama,
You've never seen a three-ell lllama.

(The author's attention has been invited to a conflagration known as a three-alarmer)

I knew about the Society, Ted, but I was just going to the ultimate source of the city’s
name. George Washington himself was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati.

>Sydney was named after the intrepid English explorer Sydney Harbour-Bridge...... I think<

He and his close friend Oprah House are the spiritual parents of the nation....

>>He and his close friend Oprah House are the spiritual parents of the nation....

Gee, Oprah's our nation's spiritual parent, too!
Can't think of who the father figure might be--certainly not
Bill Clinton!

>Gee, Oprah's our nation's spiritual parent, too!

gosh, and here I'd thought we live in the same nation.
:-Þ

Actually, I've only seen bits and pieces of her show a
couple of times. I do know that I see references to her
famous book list, her famous personal problems, and her
famous love life all over the place. I do know that more
people relate to her than, say, Madonna. Though Hilary's
big-time embarrassment undoubtedly won her a lot of sympathy, I think her personality pretty well offset that.
So, Oprah still gets my vote. (Barbara Bush has the highest qualifications of anyone I can think of, but no longer has enough publicity to stay in the running.)

AnnaS., what say you? Who's our spiritual leader?

I wouldn't say that Hillary really got much sympathy from the whole "Monica" thing, because she's had her share of scandals herself, and she's just plain stupid if her husband, a man with so much publicity, can have two affairs and have her still deny it.

Just by seeing the reaction to Barbara Bush during the Republican National Convention says that she's still very popular and well-liked.

I don’t have the facts available to me here but would like to keep this interesting city names thread going, and have a question to ask, so will work from memory. Please forgive any inaccuracies you may discover!

As many of you will be aware a large number of English place names are Saxon in origin, in fact the name Sussex, the county I live in, means South Saxons and is rich in Saxon place names. An example of this is a small town called Billingshurst. There was a Saxon leader named Billa who brought his people (people = ing in Saxon) to England where they settled on a wooded hillside (hurst in Saxon), hence Billingshurst. Near their settlement was a Roman Road and over a period of time numbers of them wandered up this road, which led to London, and formed another settlement at the gate into the city. This became known as Billingsgate and was the site of the famous London fish market that was moved to a new location a few years ago.

When people moved out from Europe to new lands they tended to name the communities they formed after the ones they had left behind. I wonder how far the old Saxon names have spread around the world and my question is does anyone know of a “Billing…” based name in the USA, Australia, NZ, SA etc?

dxb.

Lansing, Michigan

The City of Lansing was created expressly to be the state capital. The site was chosen in Lansing Township in Ingham County in part because of its location near the center of the state. At first, it was to be designated "Michigan, Michigan" but (whew) the name Lansing was eventually selected according to the wishes of the site's early settlers, who had emigrated from Lansing, New York. The settlers wished to honor the American jurist and political leader, John Lansing.

Michigan is based on the Chippewa Indian word "meicigama", meaning "great water", and refers to the Great Lakes.

The first man you looked for; the last you wanted to meet.

And how many of y'all who know who Matt Dillon was also know who played him on the original radio show?

Hint: Perfect for the radio show; no way he could have done it on TV.

Dear Faldage,

Matt Dillon? You have a city named Matt Dillon? Or have I missed something? Dunno the answer to your question tho'.

dxb

This is a cheat since it's not a city, but one of my favourite place names is Charing Cross in London.

Apparently when Queen Eleanor died somewhere up north (help! my English history is very sketchy) she was carried in state all the way to London with memorial crosses erected at all the places where the cortege stopped. The final one was at Charing Cross so named because of the beautiful stone cross erected in memory of the "Chere Reine", the Dear Queen.

I just love the way the English have mangled French expressions over time. And then they wonder why the "Frogs" despise them.

dxb, there's Billings, Montana.
I was trying to look up New Zealand cities (what can I say, I'm rather partial to that country now), and have just picked myself up off the floor after reading this web site:
http://216.121.122.144/NZ/Culture/HitchHikersGuide.html
CK, now I have an idea of why you are the way you are!
I still have tears streaming from things like this: Swannies: Woolen bush shirts and jackets made by Swanndri NZ Ltd. Very waterproof, scratchy, rugged, warm and make you look like a mass murderer when hitch hiking.

Jackie, thanks for the response. Any others out there?

Billings sounds as though it may be named after a person (that word again) rather than a "back in the old country" town. There is no Billings in Europe - there's a bold statement! Nevertheless the person's name obviously derives from old Billa and his folk.

Thanks also for the marvellous link - I am amazed that at 4.00am they were sober enough to write it whilst at the same time being drunk enough to write it!

dxb.

Dear Phyllisstein (I love that pseudonym),

I just love the way the English have mangled French expressions over time. And then they wonder why the "Frogs" despise them.

The French don't despise us. The truth is that they choose to appear as though they despise us in order to disguise the fact that they are totally baffled by our straightforwardness. They can't believe anyone can be that straightforward, it must be a cover up for something really devious, so they label us "perfidious Albion". Anyone remember whose phrase that was?

Since Paris is just about my favourite city (San Francisco and Edinburgh almost equal it), I can't afford to believe they really despise me!

dxb.

Since Paris is just about my favourite city (San Francisco and Edinburgh almost equal it), I can't afford to believe they really despise me!

Sorry, dxb. Just teasing with tasteless stereotypes. And your love of Edinburgh seems quite in tune for a Francophile; it always strikes me as a very French-looking city somehow.

On a complete tangent (is this allowed?): I was amazed to learn recently that the English court spoke French almost exclusively (and never bothered to learn the language of the populace) for a few hundred years. Maybe that's why the great unwashed took such pleasure in mangling the French phrases.

have I missed something?

http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=3213

It's not something that's likely to be known by most anyone but USns.

And how many of y'all who know who Matt Dillon was also know who played him on the original radio show?

ONE!

a large number of English place names are Saxon in origin...

On an analogous note - is there any truth to the statement that "Torpenhow Hill" represents four generations of conquest, linguistic assimilation, and inadvertent redundancy bred of ignorance, and would really be "HillHillHill Hill" if translated back into the respective languages of the successive conquerors?

i.e., TOR = hill in indigenous language
PEN = hill in language of first conqueror, who called it Tor Pen, thinking it was "Tor Hill"
HOW = hill by next wave, giving "Torpen How" in his language
HILL by most recent, etc., giving the present Torpenhow Hill

Or is this all just another appealing Urban Legend?

Dunno wofa... but "tor" is Norse, no?

"tor" is Norse, no?

Don't know for sure, but it's English by now ! At least in all the crossword puzzles.

Well, ICLIU

from http://m-w.com:
Main Entry: tor
Pronunciation: 'tor
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English torr
Date: before 12th century
: a high craggy hill

Hmmph. I coulda sworn.

from m-w.com:
tor...noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English torr
Date: before 12th century
a high craggy hill

...and M-W is no help at all for Pen (n) = hill (though it does give "prison" and "female swan" and nothing whatsoever to suggest How (n) = hill...

There's a Torbay in Newfoundland, just north of here, apparently named after a Torbay in Britain. I'd always thought it was Norse in origin (I have a Norwegian husband - so why wouldn't I think that the "tor"part was Norwegian) until I looked it up one day, and it had the meaning of craggy hill, so it's "Craggy Hill Bay". Which is right, if you see the place!

one of my favourite place names is Charing Cross in London.

When I was in London over spring break we rode the tube quite a bit. I thought the most intriguing stop name was Elephant and Castle. I've since learned that it's a mondegreen for "le enfant de Castille". I'm not sure what that means, but I like the new name more.

I think it's "l'enfant de Castille", which would mean "Castillian child" - Spanish baby!, not altogether unlike Faldage's Swedish mama!

and presumable about Catherine of Arregone, Henry VIII's first wife. (a princess of castille!)

she came to england as a child, was married to Henry's older brother, Arthur, but the marriage was never consumated. (they were both preteens at the time of the marriage.)

when arthur died, she was kept in england, and eventually married to Henry, but by now, she was no longer a child, and about 6 years older then Henry. (she was about 24 when was Henry's 19 years old)

The origins of the name Elephant and Castle are lost in the mists of time, but Infanta of Castile is one possibility. However the Infanta in question was probably Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, and none other than the origin of Charing Cross (see above).

Bingley

The name-origins of some small towns near Birmingham, (Origin Unknown) Alabama (Albamos Indians) like many place names are quaint, ignorant, cutesy, pretentious and sometimes amusing. One example...

>REMLAP<
A family of early settlers immodestly chose to name a town, near Locust Forks, after themselves. Their name was Palmer. The Palmers apparently were a contentious clan, five families of Palmers got mad and moved ten miles down the road and established the town of REMLAP -which is Palmer spelled backwards. The REMLAP Palmers were probly right about the Palmer Palmers -a hundred years later the descendents of the Palmers of Palmer changed the name of their town to the more high-faluting sounding PALMERDALE.

a Pommie Bastard who was probably marinating his brain in gin at the time.

and the name of the Pommy bastard in question was, I believe, Winston Churchill, who became more famous than infamous in a later war... :)

yep, mav... max had already noted "WSC".

On the radio, Matt Dillon was played by William Conrad.

Oh, and btw, they weren't kidding about Dannevirke, take it from someone who knows.

Seconded. I think I had the worst feed of fish and chips I've ever had from the Dannevirke Fish Supply. Bulls is crap, too. Te Awamutu is twaddle. Auckland was built where it is because they needed somewhere to put all the ignorant twats who think that "Shortland Street" is some kind of Kiwi cultural statement. Kind of explains why there are 1,000,000 people there. The alternate theory is that they just needed somewhere to put a gas station so people could fill up between Kaitaia and Bulls.

The rumour is that volcanic activity under Auckland is increasing and that one day One Tree Hill, Mt Hobson, Mt Wellington and all the other old volcanoes will blow their tops and wipe the place off the face of the earth. The rest of us are praying to Vulcan ...

And, if you hadn't cottoned on, Westies are the Kiwi version of rednecks. But the fact that the authors used it marks them down as Aucklanders. No one in the rest the of the country would be so crass as to use the term. Roll on the geothermal activity ...

Seconded. I think I had the worst feed of fish and chips I've ever had from the Dannevirke Fish Supply. Bulls is crap, too. Westies are the Kiwi version of Rednecks. -Capital Kiwi

Boy, Cap, and I thought it was the "Burms" from Birmingham that you were mad at. Boy-hidie, give you a bad feed of fish and chips and you are ready blow up the place with volcanos. And like you said..."Bulls is crap, too."

Well, try as I may, I can't generate much hatred for the Alabama version of Westies, it'd be kinda like the Rednecks calling the Trailer-trash "[white]".

But still, my beloved kin-country folk can match faux pas to faux pas with the best of yours. and if you think that "Te Awamutu is twaddle." just read below...

Errata, Alabama

Ten years after the War Between The States the L&N RR made a preliminary map for a proposed track route connecting Birmingham with the marble quarries of Sylacauga, Alabama. The map was flawed, it showed the tracks running on the wrong side of a ridge. The mapmakers caught the error and printed ERRATA at that place on the map. At that place in the real world, cotton farmers became much pleased when they found out that they had been living in the community of Errata and began acting proud. The Railroad went along with the joke and built a coaling station there with a big sign that read Errata. The town of Errata never amounted to much, but the sign is still there and Errata still appears on state maps.

Bug Tussle, Alabama

There wasn't much in the way of entertainment for a poor dirt farmer in Blount County during Prohibition. The Free Will Baptist Church provided diversions for the ladies, but the menfolk had only Saturday afternoon gatherings at Guffey's General Store to do their bonding, as it is current to call it.
One day early last century two Giant Pincher Beetle were discovered fighting in the dirt in front of the store. These Beetles fight for territory, and they fight until one throws the other on it's back. The overturned beetle can't right itself and slowly dies. Sometimes these battles go on for hours, the Beetle battle that day went on well past supper time, well after all the white lighting was gone, and in memory, it became the highlight of the menfolk's social life for years to come.

Today the Bug Tussle Steak House serves a 24 ounce steak. If you can eat all of it you don't have to pay.

City of Tarrant City City

New York City is so named so it could be easily distinguished from New York State. There is no state named Tarrant.
For whatever obscure and inane legal reason the State of Alabama township incorporation papers, incorporate the cities name in this manner...
The city of__________________city.
Insert Tarrant City into the blank and the presumptuous town is incorporated today as above.

Last year Tarrant City changed it's name to just plain Tarrant.

Oh, milum, I am rolling! (Ow!) Those are great stories! Are these from your book?

Errata be a law against things like that

Loved your explanations of place names, Milum. I wish that our Victorian forebears in Zild had had the same senses of humour and lack of literacy!

In the early 1800s, a plank road ran west from Detroit, and when the sixth terminal stop was settled as a village, it was named (perhaps also in conjunction with the concept of "new") No. VI --> Novi.

Wrapping us back to Jazzo's original post, Cincinnati originally had a different name: Losanteville.

Cincinnati is on the Ohio River where the Licking River flows into it, and from this comes the earlier name, through a polyglottal process of jamming words together: ville (city en Francais) ante (across from in Latin) os (mouth in Latin) and "L" for Licking, so "City across from the mouth of the Licking River."

Beloit, Wisconsin was originally Turtle, but the inhabitants soon decided that Turtle wasn't uptown enough for their tastes so they decided to call it Belotte from the French word for beautiful. They thought about it for a while and decided that Belotte sounded a little too rough so they decided to spell it Beloit and pronounced it to rhyme with Detroit.

ROTFLMAO faldage, for reasons you couldn't know: my father-in-law lives in Beloit.

The city lies in Turtle Township (Turtle Creek) runs through it, and the police squadcars thus must suffer the ignominy of bearing as their insignia Turtle Police.