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Erroneously, it was once assumed that Oslo meant "the mouth of the Lo river", referring to a lost name of the river Alna. This apocryphal story is not only ungrammatical (the correct form would be Loaros, cf. Nidaros), but the name Lo is not recorded anywhere before Peder Claussøn Friis first used it in the same work in which he proposed this etymology.[1] The name Lo is now believed to be a back-formation arrived at by Friis in support of his spurious etymology for Oslo.[2]
During the Middle Ages the name was initially spelt "Áslo" and later "Óslo". The earlier spelling suggests that the first component ás refers either to the Ekeberg ridge southeast of the town ("ås" in modern Norwegian), or to the Aesir. The most likely interpretations would therefore be either "the meadow beneath the ridge" or "the meadow of the gods". Both are equally plausible.
A fire in 1624 destroyed much of the medieval city, and when the city was rebuilt it was moved westwards in order to be nearer the Akershus Fortress. King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway renamed the reborn city Christiania. According to an official spelling reform (that changed ch to k) the form was changed to Kristiania in 1877. (The same year the city names Christiansand and Christiansund were changed to Kristiansand and Kristiansund—and the name of the county Christians Amt was changed to Kristians Amt. The new form was used in all official documents and publications of the Norwegian State, but not by the municipality itself. The city continued to use the old form until 1897, then they also changed to Kristiania (without any formal or official decision).
This original name was restored by a law of 11 July 1924, effective 1 January 1925; a decision which caused much debate in its time.
When the city in general now took up the name of Oslo again, the eastern district of the city that had preserved the old name became known simply as Gamlebyen (Old Town). The old square of Christian IV's city was named Christiania torv in 1958, and this name (with the old ch-form) is still in use on signs and maps.
The city was referred to as Tigerstaden (the City of Tigers) by the author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson around 1870, due to his perception of the city as a cold and dangerous place. This name has over the years achieved an almost official status, to the extent that the 1000-year anniversary was celebrated by a row of tiger sculptures around city hall. The prevalence of homeless and other beggars in more recent times led to the slight rewording of the nickname into Tiggerstaden (the City of Beggars).