Viron

The Whorl city of Silk and most of the other characters in The Book of the Long Sun.

Etymology

Viron is an Old French word meaning circle. This is the root from which we get the words environs and environment. This suggests the circular Whorl in which the story takes place.

Viron is also the Finnish word for Estonia which is known to the Finns as "werewolf country".  The Finnish word for werewolf is vironsusi, which is "Estonian wolf" in Finnish. But this apparently a false etymology; the original meaning of vironsusi is "man-wolf." So viron also comes from a word meaning "man" or "human". 

This is Wolfe's little joke, because as Estonia is "werewolf country," so Viron is the city of the man, Wolfe.

How Estonia got such a reputation is dubious, but perhaps it is due to it being settled by Neurians who were located by Herodotus (around 420 BC) in an area nearby in what is currently Belarus. The following is what Herodotus said about Neurians in his Historia:

One generation before the attack of Darius they were driven from their land by a huge multitude of serpents which invaded them. Of these some were produced in their own country, while others, and those by far the greater number, came in from the deserts on the north. Suffering grievously beneath this scourge, they quitted their homes, and took refuge with the Budini. It seems that these people are conjurers: for both the Scythians and the Greeks who dwell in Scythia say that every Neurian once a year becomes a wolf for a few days, at the end of which time he is restored to his proper shape. Not that I believe this, but they constantly affirm it to be true, and are even ready to back their assertion with an oath. 
Historia, Book 4, section 105

Of course the Vironese of the Long Sun were also driven from their homes by serpents: the Ayuntamiento "in their own country" and the Trivigaunti which came from the "deserts well to the south" (On Blue's Waters, Proper Names in the Text). "Well to the south" could reasonably be "north." 

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