Create a directive called myVar
with
scope : { myVar: '@' }
and call it like this:
<div name="my_map" my-var="Richmond,VA">
Note in particular the camel case reference in the directive to the hyphenated tag name.
For more information see "Understanding Transclusion and Scopes" here:- http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/directive
Here's a Fiddle that shows how you can copy values from attributes to scope variables in various different ways within a directive.