Capital cities and their names. Origins and beginnings.

Did you ever wonder how a place got its name? Why London or Paris or Cairo are called so? Sometime it is very clear like in the case of Washington, or Peretsburg. But other times the meanings have been lost and we have to dig dipper to find out.  
In the absence of written evidence historians have to rely on other sources and call in other disciplines. They analyze the origins and the roots of the words - etymology, the legends - mythology, the results of the earth excavations - archeology and others sources.
Based on all the information they can gather through the sources I mentioned above, and other I did not mention, they come up with theories and hypothesis about the subject. Then they correlate them with historical facts and sometime with common sense and they rank those theses. Then the academic world comes to weight them and to accept one ore more of them. The most accepted ones become the official theories and are then spread as a fact to all of us.
But sometime a name prove to have such obscure origins that not even scientists can separate the myth from the reality. That’s the case with very old cities. We hardly know now why London is named like that or when it was originated.

Here are some of the world most famous and old cities and the theories (or facts) behind their names.   

 The historians have decided that London comes from the Latin word Londinium which was given to a pace on the actual London site.
Londinium could come from
a. the name of a Celt called Londinos, that they think it means “the wild one”,
b. from a king called Lud that had taken over the place and named it Kaerlud,
c. from “ plowonida”, a Celtic pre-european word that translates “river too wide to ford” probably referring to the river Thames that runs through.  In welsh plowonida became Llundain.
To conclude, there is much theory then certainty.
What we know for sure is that when Romans conquered the place around 43 AD they referred to it as Londinium. During centuries, London has been also called Augusta, Lundenwic and Lindenburh.
The first written mention of London as Londinium comes from the roman historian Tacitus describing the battle between Boudicca's armies (the queen of a Celtic tribe) and the Romans in the year of 60 AD.

 Paris, the Capital of France got it’s name from a Celtic tribe called Parisii. According with linguists, parisii means “working people”. They lived in the region of Paris called Nanterre though it was thought that their first settlement was a fishing village in Ile de la Cite sur la Seine about 250 BC.
The first written documents about the city date in the first century BC when the Romans conquered Gaul (parts of the actual territory of France) during Julius Cesar campaign in 52 BC. These documents mention a settlement called Lutetia Parisiorum, more then likely a Celtic name too. During the Roman rule the city maintain the name of Lutetia but once the roman empire disintegrated the city was rename Paris (about 360 AD). And so remained until today.

 Tokyo means “the east capital” and got its actual name in 1868 when it became the capital of Japanese empire. (The Japanese empire was proclaimed in January 1868 and lasted until May 1947). Before this date the city was known as Edo and Tokey.
A small village at origins, Tokyo grew into a fortress during the Edo period and then, with the rise of Tokugawa shogun (1543 - 1616)  it became the capital of Japan.  
For a while, Tokyo shared responsibilities with Kyoto another large city in Japan. While Tokyo was the economic and political center of the country, Kyoto was the residence of the emperors and their families. In 1867 the secular shogunate of Japan came to an end and the emperors took full prerogatives. The Meiji emperor moved to Tokyo and declared the city the official capital of Japan.

The name of the Romanian capital is Bucuresti, Bucharest being the western pronunciation. According with an old legend, on the present site of the city was once a village founded by a shepherd called Bucur. In Romanian language “bucur” means joy. But the name of the city is not associated in any way with joy.
The first document that mention the name of Bucuresti dates from 1459. The city was, at first, a trade center and later, at the end of the 17th century, became the capital of the Principality of Wallachia and kept its status through the unification of Wallachia with Moldavia and Transylvania.

 First known as New Amsterdam, from it’s first dutch colony, the city was renamed New York in 1664 when the English colonists took control over the dutch settlement in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, later king James II of England, Scotland and Ireland.
York is a city with a very long history situated in northern England. Today, it is accepted that York comes from a Celtic word and means “the place with yew trees”, yew being a conifer native to some parts of Europe.  

If the name is traced through Greek etymology, then Istanbul means “in the city” but if the name is traced through Turkish folklore then it means “plenty of Islam”. So, it is a little of a dispute here. But Turkish capital and its list names has a long and complicated history.
The first settlement, called Lycos, was founded by Thracians sometimes in the 11th century BC. In antiquity the city became famous under he name of Bizantium, (Bizantyon). It changed names in 5th century AD, when it was named Constatinople, after the emperor Constantin the Great.
In 1453 the Turks conquered the city and made it their new political headquarter. For century, the metropolis was the capital of Ottoman Empire, under the name of Constantinople. The Turks didn’t mind the greek name, more likely seeing it as a reason of pride and prestige. But they did used the name of Istanbul too, sometime associated with military authority.
Istanbul became the official and only name of the capital of Turk Republic in 1930.

 Madrid (Spain) means “place of abundant  water”
Moscow  (Russia) (Moskva in Russian) comes from the river that runs through the city - Moskva.
Copenhagen (Denmark) means the port of merchants
Budapest (Hungary) was formed by putting together the names of two cities settled on the left and right bank of Danube river: Buda and Pest.
Cairo (Egypt)means “the strong” in arabic. Egyptians translate it as “place of combat”
Beijing (China) means “the north capital”.
Berlin (Germany) means “swamp”
Belgrade means “white city”

This article is based on information from Online Etymology Dictionary, Wikipedia, and other traditional sources as well as my own historical knowledge.
This article is also open to more entries, as I will read and find more interesting information. If you know the origin of the name of a place please contribute through the comments. I am interested in adding them, as they come, to the body of the article, attributing the infos to the author who post it.