Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-27966940-20160712001717/@comment-25936766-20160718013800

About the meaning of London, I'll just copy-paste from Wikipedia.

''The etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century. It is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city from AD65/70-80 include the word Londinio ("in London"). The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.''

From 1898, it was commonly accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos; this explanation has since been 'rejected. '

Richard Coates put forward an explanation in 1998 that it is derived from the pre-Celtic Old European *(p)lowonida, meaning 'river too wide to ford', and suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London; from this, the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, *Lowonidonjon; 'this requires quite a serious amendment however. '

''The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *(h)lōndinion (as opposed to *londīnion), from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name.''

''The etymology of the name Londinium is unknown. Following Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical History of the Kings of Britain, it was long derived from an eponymous founder named Lud, son of Heli. There is no evidence such a figure ever existed. Instead, the Latin name was probably based on a native Brittonic placename reconstructed as *Londinion. Morphologically, this points to a structure of two suffixes: -in-jo-. ''

''However, the Roman Londinium was not the immediate source of English "London" (Old English: Lunden), as i-mutation would have caused the name to have been Lyndon. This suggests an alternative Brittonic form Londonion; alternatively, the local pronunciation in British Latin may have changed the pronunciation of Londinium to Lundeiniu or Lundein, which would also have avoided i-mutation in Old English. The list of the 28 Cities of Britain included in the 9th-century History of the Britons precisely notes London in Old Welsh as Cair Lundem or Lundein.''