After wading through proto-Bantu word lists, I believe basically all of them essentially mean "village," with some variation/exception:

Mucenge (Mucèngè) - "village plaza, capital"; "main village"

Mucúmbà - "chief's village"

Dipáta (Lipátà) - "tract of land pertaining to village or a ward in the village"

Mucé (Kicì, Kicé?; Ncì, Ncé) - not as certain of this but, I think it's "ground"; "country," although I've seen the word more as -ci/-cì rather than -cé (and also a different class)

Ngándá (Ngàndá) - "village"; "house, chief's enclosure"

Mungì - "village"

Dijádi (Lijàdí) - "village"

Gumbo (Ligumbo) - "house, village" (this one is lacking a class prefix, I've seen some mention of it being Class 5, hence Ligumbo)
Mucókó - "village"

Budá (Vudá) - "village"

Just someone with an interest in linguistics and historical place names (and a knack for research)! :D

For the Maasai (with modern placenames - hopefully helpful for Ryansinbela's map!):

SeelingCat wrote:

Just someone with an interest in linguistics and historical place names (and a knack for research)! :D

For the Maasai (with modern placenames - hopefully helpful for Ryansinbela's map!):

Enkare Nanyokie	Nanyuki	"red water"; 'water' + 'red'
Enchorro Emuny	Ngong	"pool of the rhino"; 'spring of water; well from which sand must be scooped regularly' + 'rhinoceros'
Kiserrian	Kiserian, also known as Githiria	"a peaceful place"; related to the word for 'to be safe'
Ongata Barrikoi	Ongata Barrikoi, Narok County	"light brown-yellow plain"; 'plain' + 'tan, beige'
Nairragie(-Enkare)	Nairagia Engare	"place where the water lies; marshy area"; related to the words for 'sleeping place' and 'to lie down' (+ 'water')
Ole Nkijape	Kijabe	"place of the cold wind"; singular masculine marker + 'coldness; wind, breeze; weather'
Narok-ilmoru	Naro Moru	"place of black stones"; 'black' + 'hard stone, hard rock'
Naiurruur	Nyahururu	either an onomatopoeic word for the sound of the waterfall, or the word of 'waterfall' itself (or both!)
Ilmorog	Limuru	'Dovyalis abyssinica,' the Abyssinian Gooseberry' (plural form)
Embusel	Amboseli (Lake Amboseli specifically)	"salty kind of dust found at the bottom of a [dry?] lake"; "salty substance for livestock"; "salty, dusty place"; related to 'em-boliei, "salt-lick"?

And just for fun:
Enkang means "location where one's people and cattle are established; home, homestead"

Moran (il-murran, sing. ol-murrani) means "warriors"

Hahaha, it's all right again! I'm glad actually that someone like you took the time to wonder why these place names were selected. Place names are one of the things we put a lot of work in (there are almost 6000 different city names in the game), even if it’s not noticed most of the time.

For the Maasai there was a double challenge (like for the bantu) because it’s a people without any written sources for the concerned era (early modern) and it’s, once again, a “non-urban” culture. 

In this case I precisely searched for toponyms because, you probably know this fact, toponyms are in most of the case the most ancient linguistic marker of a territory (that’s why a place name is so political, it tends to be stable in time). For instance, in France, rivers, mountains, dwellings still ware celtic names etc. For the Maasai, toponyms were both a great way to find “historical names” AND it was a great marker of their way of life (you see and name the land for what possibility it offers you)

I’ll have to check myself to be sure, but, in your opinion, what’s the most represented city in the base game (among all eras and cultures) ?

Cheers, have a great day !

By my rough estimations, it looks to be a tie between six cities, each with 3 appearances:

Beijing - Ming, Chinese, and Mongol Khanbaliq if you have a really weird game

Brescia - Celtic Brixia, Italian Brescia, and Venetian Bresa

Cairo - Ottoman, Modern Egyptian, Umayyad Fustat

Istanbul - Byzantine Konstantinoupolis, Ottoman Kostantiniyye, and Turkish Istanbul

London - Roman Londinium, English Londonia, British London

Ravenna - Romans, Venetians, and the Independent Ostrogothic faction

I might be tempted to give Cairo the win overall, as Heliopolis (Iunu), Giza, and Memphis (all of which are city names in the game) are within Greater Cairo today.

And for completeness sake, cities that appear on two different lists:

Ahmadabad, Aleppo, Ankara (if Hanikku = Ankuwa = Ankara, but the location is not certain), Asyut (Zawty), Avaris (Hut-waret), Babylon, Bourges (Avaricon, Bituriga), Bristol, Budapest, Bursa, Cadiz/Gadir, Canterbury, Chengdu, Clermont-Ferrand (Nemossos, Arverna), Cordoba, Damascus, Delhi (Shahjahanpur), Erbil (Arbaira/Arbaila), Frankfurt, Guangzhou, Hamedan/Hagmatana, Hangzhou, Hyderabad, Kazan, Koln, Krakow (Carrodunon), Kyiv, Lund, Lyon, Mexico City/Tenochititlan, Milan, Moscow, Narbonne, Norwich, Osaka, Padua, Palermo (Ziz), Reims (Durocorteron, Remus), Rome, Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), Seville, Sirmium, Strasbourg, Susa, Ray/Tehran (if generous), Thessalonica, Tokyo (Edo), Toledo, Toulouse, Trabzon, Uppsala, York