Soho

fashionable London neighborhood, also famous for vice by early 19c., so called at least since 1630s; this is from "So Ho!" a hunting cry (attested from c. 1300) used in calling from a distant place to alert hounds and other hunters. The West End district sometimes is said to have been so called because it was built up on an area that had been a royal park and was thus associated with hunting.

The district of the same name in New York City is so called by 1969, a contraction of South of Houston Street but probably deliberately echoing the London name.