London is a brand before it’s a city. It sells to an international audience that has never been there, and anything pairing that name with a modern prefix inherits some of that reach. Meta is the right prefix because it outlasts the technology it’s currently associated with. The virtual worlds reading is real enough: a digital London, a mirror-world project, a VR venue, an immersive studio working with the city. But meta has been a productive prefix in English for far longer than any platform, and meta-London also reads as London about London.

No city on earth is a better candidate for a digital twin. Fixed footprint, no cars, a strict and instantly recognisable visual language, and more visitors than residents. Venice already behaves like a simulation. That makes the virtual worlds reading unusually credible here rather than generic. But the name survives without it, because meta-Venice also reads as Venice about Venice, and the city generates an enormous quantity of writing, art and argument about itself.