Ugh. "sacred"? Sounds like you're more in the utterly ignorant category than in the pretentious one when it comes to First Nations cultures, Tewder.
I think Tewder was being sarcastic.
Tkaronto is an interesting name with a unique tie to the history of the city. It's interesting enough to get people to go out and actually look up the history of the word, and by extension, the name of the city itself.
And look, it might be "unpronouneable," but to a non-local many of Toronto's placenames are, if not unpronounceable, than at least counter-intuitive - Roncesvalles, Strachan, Etobicoke, even Queen's Quay to people unfamiliar with the word (and let's not forget how much of an "oh it's a tourist" reaction we all usually get when someone talks about Tor-on-toe). How we approach placenames can also tell us a lot about a person or a community. Take the Spa-dee-nah vs. Spa-dye-nah class marker, or, to go further afield, the Brawn-ee vs. Brawn-tee vs. Brawn-tay mark of local-ness, or even the perpetual the Beach vs. the Beaches debate. Maybe one hundred years down the line, people will still be debating how to correctly pronounce Tkaronto. I certainly hope they will be.
To go off topic for a second, I wonder how long-lasting the name HtO will prove to be. Will it's brand of clever I-know-how-to-subscript survive the test of time? Or for that matter, how long will the novelty of CityPlace last before it becomes City Place or Cityplace (I mean, the whole one-word-that's-actually-two-words-with-a-capital-in-the-middle is already so 2005)
