I got this from wikepedia and it is still unclear to me how Vientiane can be translated as 'City of Sandalwood'. Must be my Lao dialect from the south-central Laos.

The name of the city is derived from Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism. Its original meaning is "royal sandalwood grove" or "city of sandalwood", this tree being highly valued in classical India for its fragrance. In modern Lao, the meaning of Vientiane is ambiguous, and is often mistakenly believed to mean "city of the moon", because the words for 'moon (chandra (चन्द) in Sanskrit)' and 'sandalwood (chandana (चन्दन) in Sanskrit)' are written and pronounced identically as 'jan'. However, the name in Thai, เวียงจันทน์, retains the etymologically correct spelling, and clearly indicates "city of sandalwood" as the meaning. The romanized spelling "Vientiane" is of French origin, and reflects the difficulty the French had in pronouncing the hard "j" sound in the Lao word; a common English-based spelling is "Viangchan", or occasionally "Wiangchan

I think Vientiane mean the city of the moon.
:)

Vieng = 'city'
I thought meung is city.

llX wrote on 5^th Apr, 2011 at 10:23pm:

I think Vientiane mean the city of the moon. :)