Etymology

Montreal

M3O1N1T1R1E1A1L1

Today it means: A river port, the largest city in Quebec, Canada. Full definition →

French Montréal ← Italian Monte Real
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Italian · derived fromMonte Real
  2. French · borrowed fromMontréal
  3. English todayMontreal

From French Montréal; from Mont Royal (“Mount Royal”) (mont + royal), after the nearby hill by Jacques Cartier. It is uncertain how Royal became -real. A common explanation is that real is the Middle French form of Royal, but Cartier himself recorded le mont Royal when he named it. It may have perhaps been from the Italian G.B. Rasmusio's 1556 map translating the name to Italian Monte Real.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.