Cape Town

Cape Town owes its name to the Cape of Good Hope, which is located nearby. When the first European explorers reached this region in the 15th century, they discovered the rocky promontory that we now know as the Cape of Good Hope. They named it thus because of the hope it represented in finding a new maritime route to the East, towards the East Indies.

Later, when Dutch settlers established a resupply station in the same region, they named the site "Kaapstad" in Afrikaans, which literally means "Cape Town" in Dutch. This name was then translated into English as "Cape Town"