SoHo
Abbreviation with 3 meanings
| Stands for | South of Houston Street |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 3 |
| Categories | Geography & Places, Science & Engineering, Technology & Computing |
| Also written | SOHO |
SoHo has three meanings. The most common are South of Houston Street (city and neighborhood) and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (astronomy & Space); it can also stand for Small office/home office.
Meanings of SoHo at a glance
| # | SoHo stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South of Houston Street | Geography & Places › City and Neighborhood |
| 2 | Solar and Heliospheric Observatory | Science & Engineering › Astronomy & Space |
| 3 | Small office/home office | Technology & Computing › Computer |
1. South of Houston Street
Geography & Places · City and Neighborhood Abbreviations
Manhattan neighborhood south of Houston Street, famous for 19th-century cast-iron buildings, art galleries that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, and now luxury shopping. The name was coined in a 1962 planning study and echoes London's Soho.
Example: The flagship store opened on Prince Street in SoHo last month.
Houston Street is pronounced HOW-stun, not like the Texas city. The success of SoHo inspired similar names across the US, such as Tribeca and SoMa. London's Soho is unrelated and not an acronym.
2. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
Science & Engineering · Astronomy & Space Abbreviations
Joint ESA-NASA spacecraft launched in December 1995 that watches the Sun from the L1 point, 1.5 million kilometers toward the Sun. SOHO monitors solar storms and coronal mass ejections and, unexpectedly, has become the greatest comet discoverer in history.
Example: In 2024 a citizen scientist found SOHO's 5,000th comet in its coronagraph images.
Most SOHO comets are tiny "sungrazers" that disintegrate as they skim the Sun, and most were spotted by amateurs examining online images. Contact was lost in 1998 and dramatically recovered months later. Designed for two years, it has operated for decades.
3. Small office/home office (SOHO)
Technology & Computing · Computer Abbreviations
Market category for very small businesses and home workers, applied to routers, printers, NAS boxes and software sized for a handful of users rather than an enterprise. Such equipment is usually set up without dedicated IT staff.
Example: This is a SOHO router, fine for five users but not for a 50-person office.
The label spread in the 1990s as PCs, fax machines and internet access made home businesses practical. Security agencies regularly warn that SOHO routers go unpatched for years and are hijacked into botnets. Not to be confused with SoHo, the Manhattan neighborhood, or Soho in London.
Related abbreviations
More city and neighborhood abbreviations
- SLC – Salt Lake City
- SLO – San Luis Obispo
- SoBe – South Beach
- SoDo – South of Downtown
- SoMa – South of Market
- STL – St. Louis
- T.O. – Toronto
- Tribeca – Triangle Below Canal Street
See all 59 city and neighborhood abbreviations →