Calais is an industrial city and port in northwest France, on the English Channel. It is the French town closest to England, and for a long time the usual place for ferries to and from Dover. A lot of English speakers know the name only as the other end of that crossing: you leave Dover, you arrive in Calais, or you wait with the trucks that are going the other way. It is a place-name, always capital C. English often says it a bit like “KAL-ay”; French says it more like “ka-LEH”. The name comes from French Calais (Middle English Caleys, from Anglo-Norman Caleis), from the Roman name Latin Caletum, after the Caleti, a Gaulish tribe in the area. That tribal name goes back to a Celtic word for “hard”.