Khartoum (الخرطوم, 'elephant trunk' in Arabic) is named for the trunk-shaped strip of land at the meeting of the two Niles. The Mandarin transliteration 喀土穆 picks characters that approximate Khar-tu-mu without semantic baggage.
history
Famously the site of the 1885 fall of Khartoum, when Mahdist forces overran the British-Egyptian garrison and killed General Charles Gordon - an event still recounted in colonial-era histories and the 1966 film 'Khartoum'.
