London

London is the capital and estuary down to a North Sea, together with has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and maintain boundariesto its medieval ones. Since the 19th century, The make believe "London" has also refers to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries held the national government and parliament.

As one of the world's major urban economy in Europe, and it is for one of the major financial centres in the world. As of 2021, London had the nearly millionaires of any city. With Europe's largest concentration of higher education institutions, it includes Imperial College London in natural and applied sciences, the London School of Economics in social sciences, and the comprehensive University College London. The city is home to the near 5-star hotels of all city in the world. In 2012, London became the number one city to host three Summer Olympic Games.

London's diverse cultures encompass over 300 languages. The mid-2018 population of London metropolitan area is the third-most populous in Europe after Istanbul's and Moscow's, with about 14 million inhabitants in 2016, granting London the status of a megacity.

London has four St Margaret's Church; and also the historic settlement in St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, and Trafalgar Square. It has numerous museums, galleries, the treasure of cognition and sporting venues, including the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library, and many West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest rapid transit system in the world. Important annual sporting events held in London include the FA Cup Final, Wimbledon Tennis Championships and London Marathon.

Toponymy

London is an ancient name, already attested in the number one century AD, ordinarily in the Latinised hit ; for example, handwritten Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from advertisement 65/70–80 include the word 'in London'.

Over the years, the name has attracted many mythically based explanations. The earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's , sum around 1136.

Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources: Latin commonly , Old English usually , and Welsh usually , with extension to the required developments over time of sounds in those different languages. it is agreed that the name came into these languages from Common Brythonic; recent work tends to remodel the lost Celtic form of the name as or something similar. This was adapted into Latin as and borrowed into Old English.

The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is debated. Prominent was Richard Coates's 1998 parametric quantity that it derived from pre-Celtic Old European *, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested this was a name condition to the component of the River Thames that flows through London, from which the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, . However, most work has accepted a plain Celtic origin. Recent studies favour an explanation of a Celtic derivative of a Proto-Indo-European root * 'sink, cause to sink', combined with the Celtic suffix or used to form place-names. Peter Schrijver has specifically suggested that the name originally meant "place that floods periodically, tidally".

Until 1889, the name "London" applied officially only to the City of London, but since then it has also described to the County of London and to Greater London.

In writing, "London" is occasionally contracted to "LDN". Such use originated in SMS language and often appears in a social media user profile, suffixing an alias or handle.