Name That Place

25 Name That Place Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Come By Chance, Nowhere and Somewhere-all are names of towns and cities in North America. Ottawa, Beijing, Paris, Hanoi and Tokyo-all are important world cities. But how did they get these names? And why? Some names sound funny, and some of them make no sense when you first hear them. But there is always a story and a tradition behind a name. People settle in an area. A city begins to grow. In the beginning, it might have no name, but soon, people start calling it something. When enough people use this name, it usually sticks. And a new city name is born. In the tradition of East Asia, important cities are given names that tell us exactly what they are, and where they are located. Nearly everyone will know that Beijing means “ northern capital" . But did you know that Tokyo and Hanoi mean “ eastern capital" ?

Ottawa, Canada's capital city, was given its name thousands of years ago. It is located at a place where two rivers meet, and was a place where Indian nations came to trade with each other long ago. In the native language, Adawe means “ to trade" . When the Europeans first settled in the area, they heard the Natives calling the place Adawe. Said aloud, this sounded like Ottawa to the European ear. Soon enough, everyone was referring to the city as Ottawa. When a European explorer arrived at a place in the far northern region of Canada, he found Native people living near the shores of Great Slave Lake. They carried huge knives made of copper, which appeared yellow in the shining sun. The explorer decided to call them Yellowknives. He named the place where they lived, Yellowknife. Today, it is Canada's largest northern city. Next time you hear an unusual city name, see if you can discover how it got that name.