Nuuk mainland, and was named Godthåb ("Good Hope"). The city officially adopted its current name in 1979, although the name "Godthåb" remained in use in Danish. "Nuuk" is the Kalaallisut word for "cape" (). It is so named because of its position at the end of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord on the eastern shore of the Labrador Sea. Its latitude, at 64°10' N, makes it the world's northernmost capital, only a few kilometres farther north than the Icelandic capital Reykjavík. The campus of the University of Greenland, hosting Statistics Greenland, and the main holdings of the Public and National Library of
Capital city prime economic, cultural, or intellectual centres of a nation or an empire are sometimes referred to as primate cities. Examples are Athens, Bangkok, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Cairo, London, Mexico City, Paris, Seoul and Tokyo. News media will often use the name of a capital city as an alternative name for the country of which it is the capital or of the government that is seated there, as a form of metonymy. For example, "relations between Washington and London" refer to "relations between the United States and the United Kingdom". The word "capital" derives from the Latin "caput" (genitive "capitis"),