Brilliant names of places you live

See if we can get this thread off the ground. If not, oh well...

Tell us where you live, used to live, were born or whatever, as long as the name of your village or city has an interesting meaning attached to its name.

I'll start - I live in a town called Best. No need to explain I hope when I think it's the best place to be?

My town's name is Żyrardów. It derives from the surname of a french engeneer and inventor Philippe Henri de Girard who worked in the factory in my town in the XIX century introducing his linen spinning machine. 

I live in Hamilton Ontario. It's often refered to as the arse hole of Ontario.

My hometown, Canton, is named, in a roundabout way, after the Chinese city of Guangzhou (which at the time was called Canton in the English-speaking world).

The city's founder named it in honor of a Maryland businessman whose plantation was called Canton Estates, after the Chinese city.

    

Edited by zappaholic - January 22 2007 at 21:05

Rio de Janeiro means River of January and the bay entrance was discovered on Jan, 1st, 1502 by Americo Vespucci, an Italian sailing for Portugal, who thought it was the mouth of a river. After returning to Europe he made a map of his travel and a German cartographer published it and named the land Terra Americi, thence America (not only the USA, of course).

I used to live in Aura:

"Aura (IPA: [ˈɑurɑ]) is a municipality of Finland. The name derives from the river Aura and the plough (aura in Finnish) reminiscent shape of the municipality." (Wikipedia)

Not only that, but Aura is also a Finnish cheese, a beer and obviously that weird energy thingy floating around all people and objects. 

Witchwoodhermit wrote: I live in Hamilton Ontario. It's often refered to as the arse hole of Ontario.

Nice list already folks! I thought Best good, but I've seen much better ones already (hmmm - there's some weird style figure in that sentence....)

I used to live in Grass VAlley, CAlifornia.

from wikipedia:


"

Well-known people associated with Grass Valley include the ace fighter pilot Chuck Yeager, philosopher Josiah Royce, the 19th century actress Lotta Crabtree, 19th century dancer Lola Montez, actor Jeremy Sisto, author John Thomson, professional skateboarder Chris Senn and bassist of the band AFI, Hunter Burgan.

Also in Nevada County are Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder, and Roger Hodgson of Supertramp.

On May 15, 1902 in a field outside Grass Valley, Lyman Gilmore reportedly became the first person to fly a powered airplane (a steam-powered glider)."

and

"Grass Valley dates from the California Gold Rush, as does nearby Nevada City. It is the location of the Empire Mine, one of the richest mines in California."

When I lived in Belgium and we were going to Sweden by car during the holidays, we passed this place called Zemst. Zemst is pronounced the same way as the Swedish word for "worst" (sämst) is, so we always laughed a little when we saw the signs.

Edited by Philéas - January 23 2007 at 17:37