Montmorency, Val-d'Oise
Montmorency (French pronunciation: [mɔ̃mɔʁɑ̃ˈsi]) is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 15.3 km (9.5 mi) from the center of Paris.
Montmorency was the fief of the Montmorency family, one of the oldest and most distinguished families of the French nobility. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris.
Name
The name Montmorency was recorded for the first time in Medieval Latin as Mons Maurentiacus (attested in 993). Mons Maurentiacus, literally "Mount Maurentiacus", was the name given to the promontory over which a castle was built in the Early Middle Ages. Maurentiacus, the name of the area surrounding the promontory, meant "estate of Maurentius", probably a Gallo-Roman landowner.
In 1689 Montmorency was officially renamed Enghien (read history section below), but the village on the slopes of the promontory was still referred to as "Montmorency" by most people.
Indeed, during the French Revolution, at the creation of French communes in 1790, the newly born commune was named Montmorency. Three years later in 1793, at the peak of the French Revolution, the name of the commune, which was probably thought of as too reminiscent of the overthrown Ancien Régime, was changed into Émile, in honor of French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau who had composed his educational treaty Émile a few decades earlier while in residence at Montmorency.