Coolest/most beautiful city names?

[monkspider]

What do you think are the most cool or most beautiful city names? I would prefer that you stick to cities that are not tiny little hamlets, but post as you see fit. You can use cities from ancient civilizations as well.

My top 10(not in any real order, per se)
1. Constantinople, Byzantium/Turkey
2. Pyongyang, Korea
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Medina, Saudi Arabia
5. Babylon, Babylon
6. Leningrad, Soviet Union
7. Tenochtitlan, Aztec Empire
8. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
9. Angkor Wat, Khmer Empire/Cambodia
10. Versailles, France

[Monk]

That's a pretty original idea for a thread, ms. I've always liked the name Providence for some reason and only discovered earlier today it means something quite unexpected. "Philadelphia" is a nice name as well, as are those on your list.

Isn't Angkor Wat more like a temple than a city, by the way?

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Monk
That's a pretty original idea for a thread, ms. I've always liked the name Providence for some reason and only discovered earlier today it means something quite unexpected. "Philadelphia" is a nice name as well, as are those on your list.

Isn't Angkor Wat more like a temple than a city, by the way?

Philadelphia, good one! I was struggling to think of a good American city name, and the best I could do is Los Angeles.
Angkor Wat was a city too, IIRC. In contemporary times it has come to represent only the temple complex though, like Macchu Pichu.

[Kontiki]

I've always been partial to Victoria. Don't know why, exactly. I just hear Victoria and think beautiful harbor, lots of trees, etc.. Probably because I'm from Vancouver....

[Zopperoni]

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

[Kontiki]

I don't know about the best US city name, but among the worst has to be Tampa. Just an "x" away from legendary tragedy.

[Winston]

Ouagadougou!!

Edit: Damn, Zopper beat me to it.

And Yokohama, Kuala Lumpur, Nairobi, Karachi, Novgorod, Vladivostok, Tashkent, Caracas, Djakarta.

Anchorage, Chicago and Norfolk are pretty neat as well.

[Godbear]

1. caberra - australia
2. seoul - south korea
3. barcelona - spain
4. warsaw - poland
5. vladivistok- russia

[monolith94]

Boston

[Edan]

Not a city, but a town:

Featherstonehaugh

pronounced Fan-shaw.

[Jaguar]

Dubrovnik, Croatia
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia
Caracas, Venezuela
An-Nasiriyah, Iraq
Shiraz, Iran
Nairobi, Kenya
Atlanta, Georgia
Taipei, Taiwan

[JCG]

in no particular order...

vienna, austria.
tokyo, japan.
karakorum, mongol empire.
constantinople, byzantine empire.
panama, panama.
El Cairo, Egypt.
cartagena, spain/colombia.
paris, france.
st. petersburg, russia.
tabriz, iran.
roma, italia. (not rome, italy though)
shenyang, china.

[Nubclear]

Vladivostok, RUSSIA
Tel-Aviv, ISRAEL
Halifax, CANADA
Pyongyang, NORTH KOREA
Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Salt Lake City, UNITED STATES.

[Immortal Wombat]

Dubrovnik is a good one. Also from Croatia: Split

Krakow, Lahore, Mandalay, Samarqand, Tripoli.

edit: Karakorum, thats the name I've been trying to remember! Thanks JCG

[Lincoln]

Guadalahara, Mexico (even though I can't spell it).

San Francisco

El Camino Reaale

Barcelona

[Lincoln]

Yes, Tel Aviv is tops

[Spiffor]

Vera Cruz, Ecuador.
Waiblingen, Germany

Also, I give a special award to Sömmerda, Germany, which has the ugliest name I've ever heard But I could ponder this with Aberystwyth, if I had any idea how this name is said

[Chilean President™]

Viña del Mar, Chile
Salisbury, England
Tripolí, Libia
Lucknow, India
Bremerhaven, Germany
Montpellier, France
Anakena, Chile

[Sandman]

Copenhagen, Denmark

Constantinople, Turkey

Kazan, Russia

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Barcelona, Spain

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Florence, Italy

Thiruvananthapuram, India

[DarthVeda]

Hell, MI

and yes, it does freeze over.

[ranskaldan]

Shanghai
Singapore
Kagoshima

San Francisco
Vancouver

Rio
Santiago

Hannover
Heidelberg (sp)

Alexandria
Damascus

Pretoria
Mogadishu

Sydney
Wellington

[Q Classic]

i've always like the sounds of:

kyongju, skorea
ch'ongju, skorea
sendai, japan
sapporo, japan
königsberg (now kaliningrad), russia
savannah, georgia

[Chilean President™]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
Santiago

I am surprised, I didn't believe that somebody liked that name.

[Kitschum]

Very nice thread idea.

I like Marrakech, Mandalay, Vientiane, Saigon, Oran, Chapultepec, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Trivandrum, Lviv, Cadiz, ...

Swedish: Umeå, Luleå, Skellefteå, Visby, Lund, Stockholm

And of course there's the tons of beautiful Central Asian place names like: Samarqand, Nishapur, Khoqand, Qaraqorum, Bukhara, Qarabalghasun, Kashgar, Merv, Hohhot, Dushanbe, Tashkent, Khiva, etc etc

[monkspider]

Vienna, Singapore, Copenhagen, and Tel Aviv are all really good ones that eluded my initial post.
To throw a few more out there:
Lisbon, Portugal
Johannesberg, South Africa
Carthage, Carthage
Budapest, Hungary
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

[Spiffor]

Monkspider :
It is called Tunisia . While there is some point in calling Iran Persia (because people are predominantly Persian there), it is absurd to call Tunisia "Carthage" : Tunisia is populated by Arabs and Desertsfolk, and takes its name from the city of Tunis, which has replaced Carthage as the capital and biggest city once the Arabs had conquered the territory. There is no common point between today's Tunisia and yesterday's Carthage, except that Carthage is located next to Tunis.

[Chilean President™]

The name on spanish of the portuguese capital is quite beautiful: Lisboa.

- Eindhoven, Neetherlands.

- Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal

- Constanza, Rumania

- Punta Arenas, Chile

- Ariana, Tunisia

- Piriapolis, Uruguay

[St Leo]

Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

[Immortal Wombat]

Of course the best names are fictional

Xanadu, Gondolin, Imlandris, Ruatha, Überwald

[orange]

"Philadelphia" is a nice name as well, as are those on your list.

Too bad it's shite.