In his 1942 Deseret Saints, Nels Anderson wrote the following about the meaning of "Nauvoo":
Smith said that Nauvoo was a
Hebrew word meaning “the beautiful.” The author has a letter from the
postmistress of Nauvoo, Alabama, named by one Thomas Carrall, who had visited
Nauvoo, Illinois, where he had been thrown into jail during the Civil War. He reported
that Nauvoo was an Indian word for “beautiful place.” (Nels Anderson, Deseret
Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1942], 51 n. 2)
I addressed "Nauvoo" being a Hebrew word, contra Brodie and other critics (including Anderson) at: