Eindhoven is a municipality and a city located in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, originally at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender streams. The Gender was dammed short of the city centre in the 1950s but the Dommel still runs through the city. The city had a population of in, making it the fifth-largest city of the Netherlands and the largest of North Brabant.Neighbouring cities and towns include Son en Breugel, Nuenen, Geldrop-Mierlo, Heeze-Leende, Waalre, Veldhoven, Eersel, Oirschot and Best. The agglomeration has a population of. The metropolitan area consists of inhabitants. Also, Eindhoven is part of Brabant Stad, a combined metropolitan area with more than 2 million inhabitants. In 2011, Eindhoven was named world's most intelligent community by Intelligent Community Forum.HistoryThe name Eindhoven derives from the contraction of the regional words eind and hove . "Eind" is toponymically a common prefix and postfix in local place- and streetnames. A "hove" was a parcel of land that might be given in leasehold to private persons such as farmers by the local lord. Taken in conjunction with the fact that a string of such parcels existed around Woensel, the original location of Eindhoven may be understood to be the "last hove on the land of Woensel".