Named for the capital of Uruguay and city of the birth of G. Tancredi {see planet  (5088)}, one of the discoverers of this minor planet. The meaning of the name comes from the fact that the city is “watched over” by a bowl-shaped hill. Founded in 1726 by the Spanish crown in order to stop Portuguese expansion, Montevideo has a long tradition in astronomy, starting in 1789 when the first observatory was built to study the transit of Mercury, the observations of which were later used by Leverrier {see planet  (1997)} to discover the secular advance of Mercury’s perihelion. In 1955 the first planetarium in the Spanish-speaking world was built there. (M 26425) _ _.