Wladiwostok

Vladivostok is a city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located around the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russia's borders with China and North Korea. The population of the city is 606,653, up from 592,034 recorded in the 2010 Russian census. The city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean.Names and etymologyThe name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as "ruler of the East" —a name similar to that of the Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz which means "ruler of the Caucasus" and which was first used in 1784. The unofficial nickname of the city is Vladik . Vladivostok was first named in 1859 along with other features in the Peter the Great Gulf area by Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky. The name first applied to the bay but, following an expedition by Alexey Shefner in 1860, was applied to the new settlement.On Chinese maps from the Yuan Dynasty, Vladivostok was called Yǒngmíngchéng .