Odessa etymology

[Mark A Mandel]

On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

#ODESSA ETYMOLOGY--My tour guide today said that Odessa has no fresh
#water source, and the name "Odessa" is "no water" backwards in French.
#This sounds like folk etymology; not even Google seems to have this
#one?

Odessa laugh!

(This is from an old joke dialogue using place names. If you don't get
it, think of it as "Oh, that's a laugh!" in some appropriate combination
of accent and skewed pronunciation.)

-- Mark A. Mandel