Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye reside, the whole Greater London area actually covers over 1,500 kilometers square!
There are a few ideas as to where the name London comes from, and even some ideas about what the city was called before it was the city we know today. Some believe that before the Romans got their hands on Britain, the land was called Plowonida from the pre-Celtic words plew and nejd which means a wide flowing river, that river being the Thames.
Some historians also believe that the city was once called Troia Nova, meaning New Troy, as it’s believed a Trojan exile named Brutus once claimed the land! As awesome a name as that is, New Troy didn’t stick around. The first recorded name we have that sounds anything like London is what the Romans called it. They named their settlement by the Thames Londinium in 43 AD.
This name is thought to come from a variety of places. One argument is that the city was named after a mythological pre-Roman King of Britain, King Lud. Yet others feel the name London has roots in the aforementioned Plowonida, with this name evolving into Lowonidonjon, eventually evolving in to the Roman name Londinium and, of course, the name we have today, London.
NEW YORK CITY
Someone once called it the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” but for now, we will stick with the name New York City. The land that contains NYC has been owned by a variety of people over its history, giving the settlement a variety of names. The land was originally New Angoulême, named by Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazzano. The explorer named it after the French King Francis who had been Count of the commune of Angoulême.
When the Dutch settled, after purchasing it from the native tribe, and sent families to live and work on the land, they named it in honor of their capital city back home, New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam fell in 1664 when the British Empire seized and took control of the city, renaming the city New York after the Duke of York at the time, who would later go on to become King James II of England! When the United States finally claimed independence from the British, however, they kept the name New York. I guess they had nowhere old to make New York the “new” version of.
NYC, of course, has a couple of nicknames too: “the city that never sleeps,” “the melting pot,” and the most notable today, “the Big Apple.” Now, I am no expert, but I have never seen any huge apples growing in the city of New York, so where does this nickname come from? The name was brought into popularity by New York City-based newspaper sports journalist Jon Fitz Gerald. He had heard of stable boys in New Orleans calling New York the Big Apple. He liked the name so much, he started to use it himself in his articles, and the name caught on.
There doesn’t seem to be any explanation as to why the stable hand called NYC the Big Apple, but from my guess, it’s because New York’s race tracks were considered the “big time” tracks in the States. Horses love apples, so these big races would be the “big apple” to them, though this is only my hypothesis.
ROME
The city of Rome is perhaps one of the most important cities still standing on the face of the planet because it was the home of the Roman Empire! The name of this city actually has roots in an ancient legend with the story of Romulus and Remus.
The story of these twin brothers goes that, as babies, they were abandoned by their parents and placed in a basket to float upon the River Tiber. The twins were eventually found and cared for by the mythical she-wolf. The image of the she-wolf feeding the twins can still be seen across the city of Rome to this day in artwork and sculptures.
When they grew older, the brothers decided to found a city for the she-wolf that looked after them. The brothers argued over where the city should be founded, leading to Romulus killing his brother! Yup, that escalated quickly. Without Remus, Romulus was able to be sole founder and first king of the city he founded, which he named after himself: Roma, or as we call it in English, Rome.
While this is just a legend, Rome was really founded due to the growth of settlements on the city’s seven hills. It was close to the Tiber which helped the civilization thrive. Yet while we now know the more realistic reason as to how the city was founded, Rome’s etymology still lives in the world of myths!
TOKYO AND KYOTO
Yep. Here we have a two-in-one because the names and histories of these two cities are so linked. Tokyo is the capital city of Japan, but this was not always the case. Japan is a country that is characterized by two overall qualities: one is this technologically advanced, fast moving, anime-and-video-game-loving power house, which is best represented in the city of Tokyo. The other is linked with an image of tranquility, rising suns, samurais, and ancient wooden buildings with sliding paper doors, which can be best seen in the city of Kyoto. It was this latter city of Kyoto that was once the country’s capital.
The name Kyoto in Japanese is this 京都 which simply means capital city, with the first character in English being kyo, meaning “capital” and the second character meaning “city.” Historically, Kyoto was the capital of Japan as it’s where the royal family of Japan lived. At the same time, however, we have the city of Tokyo. Tokyo back then was called Edo, meaning estuary, a wide part of a river which joins the sea, referencing Tokyo’s position. Edo was flourishing, being the key point of trade between Japan and the west, leaving Kyoto somewhat behind the times. This came to a head around 1868 when the young Emperor Meiji and his oligarchs wished to move the royal family from Kyoto to Edo as that is where the power of trade and access to the west was situated.
With this change of city for the royal family came a change of name for Edo. The city was renamed Tokyo, in Kanji looking like this: 東京. The name Tokyo means “east capital” as it is to the east of the country’s old capital of Kyoto. This is why the “kyo” part of the names meaning “capital” is at the start of Kyoto’s name (Capital City) while it is at the end of Tokyo’s names (East Capital).
CHICAGO
Chicago is often called “the Windy City.” It might need some of that wind to blow away it’s rather smelly etymology, as Chicago is thought to be named after onions.
The most popular theory pinpoints the naming to onions anyway, but there are other theories about how the city got its name. All these ideas suggest various Native American words. One is that the city was named after a Native Chief named Chicagou, who drowned in the river, now also called the Chicago River, while others believe that the name comes from the Native word shecaugo, meaning “playful waters” or even chocago, meaning “destitute.”
As I mentioned earlier, the most popular theory (and the one I like best) comes from those vegetables that make you cry—onions. The Natives had this wonderful way of naming places after what grew there. This was for practicality too, so they could remember where their food grew. There was a stream in Chicago and along its banks grew leeks, or as they were thought to be at the time “smelly onions.”
This led to the city being called by the Natives shikaakwa meaning “smelly onions” and when the French explored the land and heard this name, they changed it in their own tongue to Chicago. With French explorer Robert de la Salle being credited as the first person to write this name, however, he wrote it as “Checagou,” but the name we all know it as today evolved from that.
LIVERPOOL
Liverpool is the birthplace of four of the most famous names in history: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Some would argue that it was the Fab Four that put Liverpool’s name on the map, but where did that name come from to begin with?
Though not directly named after it, Liverpool’s name comes from the River Mersey that runs through it, with the pool part meaning simply that, a pool of water. So,
