section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  The word city and the related civilization come from the Latin root civitas, originally meaning 'citizenship' or 'community member' and eventually coming to correspond with urbs, meaning 'city' in a more physical sense. The Roman civitas was closely linked with the Greek polis —another common root appearing in English words such as metropolis.
  
  In toponymic terminology, names of individual cities and towns are called astionyms (from Ancient Greek ἄστυ 'city or town' and ὄνομα 'name').