#20 New York Nicknames

365 Blog Challenge: Post #20

The following are excerpts from the article in this week's Time Out New York magazine titled A History of NYC Nicknames by Jenna Flannigan.  I thought these were some interesting little tidbits.

New York The British took control of the colony in 1664, and the troops who annexed the area dubbed it after their commander, the Duke of York. Since there was already a York in England, King Charles II crafted yet another excellent application of the word new
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The Empire City Legend has it that George Washington, while tramping through the woods north of the city, proclaimed, “Surely this is the seat of the empire!” The nickname wouldn’t filter through the press until an 1836 Illinois newspaper described NYC as “the Rome of America, the Empire City of the New World.”


The Big Apple No origin story is completely reliable, but this appellation has a bookworthy history: In Origin of New York City’s Nickname “The Big Apple,” authors Gerald L. Cohen and Barry Popik trace the term from the big Red Delicious apples grown in Iowa in the 1870s, which were regarded as the most special version of the fruit. Years later, a 1920s horse-race writer for New York paper The Morning Telegraph overheard stable hands using the phrase to describe NYC’s racetracks, which represented the big time. In the 1930s, black jazz musicians used the nickname to refer to Harlem, then to the city overall. It then lost popularity until 1971, when it was used for a New York Convention and Visitors Bureau PR campaign. 

The City that Never Sleeps New York’s insomnia is well known: The first print reference is from a 1912 story in the Fort Wayne News, about NYC erecting the world’s largest gas plant, ensuring that the metropolis would “add to its title of the city that never sleeps that of the city that never grows dark.”

Michelle and James Nevius, NYC tour guides and authors of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, also included information on the history of the borough names as sited in the article.

Manhattan
According to some sources, the isle’s moniker is derived from the local Lenape word “Manahatta,” which translates to “hilly island.” Other Native American terms—menatay, meaning “island,” or better yet, manahachtanienk, meaning “a place of general inebriation”—may have played a role, too. 


For more nicknames, check out the link above!