Jump to content

List of nicknames for Chicago

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article lists nicknames for the city of Chicago, Illinois.

Main nicknames

[change | change source]
  • "Mud City" – possibly the oldest nickname for the city, referring to the fact that the terrain of the city used to be a mud flat[1]
  • "Windy City" – origins of this name are disputed; see Windy City (nickname)
  • "Chi-Town" (pr. Shy-Town) – also used for the hockey teams Chi-Town Shooters and Chi-Town Shamrocks
  • "Second City" – this could either be coming from the fact that Chicago had the second largest metropolitan area in the United States from 1889 to 1984 (Los Angeles is now larger) or most likely it is coming from the rebuilding of the city between the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893[2]
  • "City of the Big Shoulders" – taken from the fifth line of Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago"

Other Nicknames

[change | change source]

References

[change | change source]
  1. "The city had been built, inexplicably, in the middle of a mud flat, which necessitated raising portions of the downtown area on stilts above the sloshy earth, giving Chicago the first of many nicknames: Mud City.", Paddy whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, Thomas J. English, HarperCollins (c) 2005, ISBN 0-06-059002-5, pp73-74, https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060590031/paddy-whacked
  2. "Chicago Name Origin". Archived from the original on 2020-02-06. Retrieved 2020-01-07.
  3. Seeger, Eugen. "Chicago, the Wonder City" (p. 384) G. Gregory Printing Company, 1893 – Chicago
  4. Adams, Cecil (2009) "What's the origin of 'The city that works'? Archived 2017-04-19 at the Wayback Machine"
  5. Mailer, Norman (1968). "Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968" (p. 83) New American Library – New York, 1968
  6. Sampson, Robert J. (2012). "Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect" (p. 77) University of Chicago Press – Chicago
  7. Levy, John M. (2009) Contemporary Urban Planning.
  8. Parker, Alex (January 5, 2014). "Chicago Extreme Cold: City Dubbed 'Chiberia' as Dangerous Weather Moves In" Archived 2015-06-22 at the Wayback Machine, DNAinfo. Retrieved January 23, 2016.