What's the coolest name for a neighbourhood in your city?

[NYaMtl]

I still think Montréal's best is Griffintown.

[Manarii]

some of our neighborhoods in Honolulu are:

Moilili
Kakaako
Waialae
Nuuanu
Kalihi
Moanalua
Waikiki
Manoa
Makiki
Pauoa
Kaimuki
& one that never seems to sound correct:
Aina Haina

when I lived in SF, I lived on Nob Hill at Washington/Jones. There was a woman in our bldg who always joked it was 'Chinatown Heights". Some also used to call parts of Lower Nob Hill the "Tendernob".

[Sallty]

I realize this is an old post but I wanted to chime in, Indy has alot of the overused "park" neighborhoods, though more ironic since most of them don't actually have parks. But a few of the others I like are

Tuxedo park
The Highlands
Fountain Square
Monon (they are trying to call themselves Monon16 but that's stupid)
Keystone at the Crossing
Broadripple
Rocky Ripple
Ravenswood
Stringtown
Fall Creek
Ransom Place
Little Flower
Speedway (Indy 500 location)
Golden Hill (it's flat and a forest but i like the name)
Crow's Nest
Mile Square
Twin-Aire
Babe Denny

Other city's names for neighborhoods I like are:
Walker's Point (milwaukee)

Five Points (Atlanta)

Goodfellow, Mark Twain, Dutchtown (st louis)

Greektown, Mexicantown, Eastern Market, Boston Edison, Cass Corridor, Poletown, Milwaukee Junction, Hamtramck (detroit)

French quarter, garden district, bywater, irish channel, black pearl (new orleans)

Boystown, Chinatown, Magnificent mile, Wicker park, Goose Island, West Loop, Pilsen, Wrigleyville (chicago)

Germantown, the highlands, 4th street, smoketown, portland, shawnee, schnitzelburg, old louisville, cherokee triangle, iroqois park, phoenix hill, limerick (louisville)

fisherman's wharf, embarcadero, chinatown, castro, haight-ashbury, nob (snob) hill, tenderloin, golden gate park, treasure island, telegraph hill, cow hollow, cow palace, west portal, crocker amazon (san francisco)

central rim, boise junction (boise)

Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, setagaya-ku, komazawadaigaku, ueno, harajuku, shimokitazawa, roppongi, asakusa, yoyogi (tokyo... i just like how you say them)

Strawberry Hills, The spit, woolloomoolloo, the rocks, parramatta, king's cross, darlington, waterloo, camperdown

[Razor]

More quirky or cool for Ottawa

Alta Vista
The Glebe
Mooney's Bay
Lower town
Overbrook

[Chef]

Saint Paul - Frogtown

[Centropolis]

i don’t know a lot of unusual ones

skinker-debaliviere
dogtown
demun
bevo
tower grove
THE HILL
kosciusko
PATCH
visitation park
soulard

[bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by brickell

It's not that cool, but I'll give you one guess about who lives in Brownsville.

There's also
Liberty City
Model City
Coconut Grove (we can't spell)
The Roads
Flagami
Overtown is actually under the highway, underserviced and underrespected.
The Design District

For Miami I would also add :
Allapattah (Dominican hood)
Wynwood ( Puerto Rican hood & now hipster)
Brickell (named for the family that owned a lot of property there)
Morningside ( hood on the bay facing the sunrise)

[Centropolis]

new orleans has some of my favorites

as has already been mentioned

black pearl and others
however, i particularly like the way french language neighborhood names peel off in various southern dialects. it's a bit smoother than what you have in st. louis with the midwestern inflection/butchering of things like gravois, chouteau, soulard...

[tdawg]

I still chuckle inside every time I say Flushing, Queens.

[McBane]

My fav Philadelphia neighborhood names are Devil's Pocket and Swampoodle.

For a flat city, there's a surprising number of "Hills" - such as Society Hill, Chestnut Hill, and Spruce Hill. The names of these neighborhoods are very fitting as they are every bit as elegant as their names suggest.

Strawberry Mansion, on the other hand, may sound fancy shmancy but is in fact one of the city's poorest and most crime ridden neighborhoods.

And finally, a nod to Manayunk - beyond the funny sounding name, there's a bit of irony here. In Lenape, it means where we go to drink. Although the natives were referring to water from the Schyulkill River, the name is still very appropriate. Main Street is lined with bars and clubs and the neighborhood has a large number of college students. Indeed, Manayunk is still a place where "we go to drink."

[McBane]

Originally Posted by tdawg

I still chuckle inside every time I say Flushing, Queens.

LOL yes, very true!

Another good one in NYC is Great Kills. Very befitting of some crime infested neighborhood, except it's actually a very quiet, suburban neighborhood in Staten Island. I believe the name is Dutch.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by NYaMtl

I still think Montréal's best is Griffintown.

I think it sounds neat primarily because it's in Montreal. If it were in Boston or Toronto, it wouldn't be anything special.

For Montreal I like "La Petite Patrie" - the little homeland.

For Toronto I like Cabbagetown.

I am also surprised no one has mentioned Foggy Bottom in Washington DC.

[Acajack]

Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Razor

More quirky or cool for Ottawa

Alta Vista
The Glebe
Mooney's Bay
Lower town
Overbrook

"South Keys" is kind of a special one for Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

[Acajack]

Montreal used to have a neighbourhood called Faubourg à M'lasse or Mélasse, which more or less means Molasses District. It was razed in an urban renewal scheme.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by McBane

LOL yes, very true!

Another good one in NYC is Great Kills. Very befitting of some crime infested neighborhood, except it's actually a very quiet, suburban neighborhood in Staten Island. I believe the name is Dutch.

Fresh Kills Landfill as well.

[Laceoflight]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Montreal used to have a neighbourhood called Faubourg à M'lasse or Mélasse, which more or less means Molasses District. It was razed in an urban renewal scheme.

Some parts of Faubourg-à-M'lasse still exist today, and I am happy that it will basically be brought back to life with the redevelopments around the old Radio-Canada tower.

Other cool names in Montréal :

• Ahuntsic (name of a Huron who unfortunately died in the river, in the 17th century)
• Le Mile-Ex (a contraction between the Mile-End and Parc-Extension, as the neighbourhood borders them both)
• La Petite-Bourgogne (probably to honour some obscure heirs, nobody's really certain. There's no link to the French region)
• Côte-des-Neiges always sounded like a poem to me. Though the place is far from poetic
• Hochelaga sounds cool. It's probably a deformation of Osheaga, the name of the iroquoian village that was located around mount Royal in the times of Jacques-Cartier.
• Lachine (in other words : China) sounds normal to the Montréalais(es), but is considered strange by most tourists. It comes from the fact that the first French settlers thought the St. Lawrence river could be the road to China.
• Goose Village or Le Village-aux-Oies was the place where the First Nations went goose hunting a few centuries ago. This district was razed in 1964 to make place for Expo67's Autostade. It was populated with working-class Italian and East European immigrants mostly.

[LMich]

Interesting neighborhood names with history behind the name? Can't think of many here in Lansing. I guess "Coachlight Commons" is unusual, but it's named after an apartment complex. lol

In Detroit the kind of interesting characteristics are many of the neighborhoods with at least some commercial streets are called "towns." So you have/had Mexicantown, Corktown, Greektown, Chaldean Town, Rivertown, etc. Another interesting one are the "Villages" of Detroit on the lower eastside: East Village, Indian Village and West Village.

[Boisebro]

some Boise favorites:

Central Rim

Warm Springs Mesa

Boise Heights

Sherman Hollow

Sunset

Hillcrest

[mousquet]

Paris's "Goutte d'Or" (the golden drop) is a pretty cool name for such an infamous neighborhood.
It spans from Barbès to place de Stalingrad, along boulevard de la Chapelle.

It's always been a working class and drug additct neighbohood.
I think that's where l'Assommoir, one of the best novel by Émile Zola was staged in the 1850's or 60's.
A novel to deal with alochol addiction and promiscuity that the lower social class has always undergone.
I should read it again, though it's hardcore and depressing.

Today, the district belongs to crack and heroin addicts at night. You shouldn't venture over the area at night as a foreign tourist unable to speak French.
Only locals used to it can deal with crazy addicts over there.