Nicknames of Chicago

Throughout the history of Chicago, there have been many nicknames for the city of Chicago, Illinois.

Second City

"Second City" originates as an insult from a series of articles in The New Yorker by A. J. Liebling, later combined into a book titled Chicago: The Second City (1952). In it, Liebling writes about his hatred for Chicago and contrasts it to his hometown New York City. He complains about Chicago's economic decline, rampant organized crime and political corruption, declining population, outdated schools of thought, and general dependency on the cities along the east coast.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Chicago-based improv comedy group The Second City references Liebling's book in their self-mocking name.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> In 2011, Chicago announced its adoption of the slogan "Second to None", a protest stance indirectly referring to Liebling's publications.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The slogan was replaced with another in 2022.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

An etymology popularized by tour guides suggests that it refers to rebuilding the city following the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chi-town

"Chi-town," "Chi-Town," or "Chitown" (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell)<ref name="Chi-town Reader"/> is a nickname that follows an established pattern of shortening a city's name and appending the suffix "-town," like "H-Town" refers to Houston.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Despite many mentions by well-known figures in popular works, such as C. W. McCall's song "Convoy," its popularity as a nickname used by locals is disputed.<ref name="Chi-town Tribune">Template:Cite news</ref> Wendy McClure wrote in the Chicago Reader in 2017 that it is the "cilantro of nicknames": its distastefulness depends on who is using it.<ref name="Chi-town Reader">Template:Cite news</ref> Events and organizations often use the nickname, for example, the hockey team Chi-Town Shooters, the WCW event Chi-Town Rumble, and the New Year's Eve event Chi-Town Rising.<ref name="Chi-town Tribune"/>

City of Big Shoulders

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"City of Big Shoulders" is a nickname coined by Carl Sandburg in his 1914 poem "Chicago," which describes the city as "stormy, husky, [and] brawling." It is the last of several nicknames in the poem; the others hint at the city's major industrial activities, for example, the meat-packing industry and railroad industry.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It is also sometimes said as the "City of Broad Shoulders."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chiberia

"Chiberia"Template:Snda portmanteau of "Chicago" and "Siberia"Template:Snd was coined by Richard Castro, a meteorologist working for the National Weather Service, during a cold wave in 2014 that brought the coldest temperatures to the city in multiple decades.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The National Weather Service used the hashtag "#Chiberia" during its reporting on the cold wave.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The nickname continues to be used during cold weather events, for example in 2017<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and in 2019.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Chiraq

"Chiraq"Template:Snda portmanteau of "Chicago" and "Iraq"Template:Sndcontroversially compares the city (given its crime rates) to war-torn Iraq. Chuck Goudie, a reporter for ABC7 Chicago, asserted that the nickname is based on an Iraq War statistic: from 2003 to 2012, 4,265 people were killed in Chicago, nearly equal to the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq in the same period. The origin of the nickname is not definitive, but it saw increasing popularity in usage around the end of the Iraq War.<ref name="Chiraq Tribune">Template:Cite news</ref> Spike Lee used the nickname as the title of his 2015 film.<ref name="Chiraq ABC7">Template:Cite news</ref>

City in a Garden

In the 1830s, the government of Chicago adopted the motto "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}," a Latin term that translates to 'City in a Garden.' It is displayed in the city's seal.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Chicago Park District adopted a seal in 1934 that contains the Latin phrase {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, meaning 'Garden in a City.'<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Great Commercial Tree

"Great Commercial Tree" comes from the lyrics of the state anthem of Illinois: "...  Till upon the inland sea, stands thy great commercial tree..."<ref>Template:Cite report </ref>

Other nicknames

• "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<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• "City by the Lake" – used as early as the 1890s<ref>Seeger, Eugen. "Chicago, the Wonder City" (p. 384), G. Gregory Printing Company, Chicago, 1893</ref>
• "The City that Works" – slogan from Richard J. Daley's tenure as mayor, describing Chicago as a blue-collar, hard-working city, which ran relatively smoothly<ref>Adams, Cecil (2009) "What's the origin of 'The city that works'? Template:Webarchive"</ref>
• "The Great American City" – taken from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer's book Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968): "Chicago is the great American city ... perhaps [the last] of the great American cities";<ref>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</ref> "the notion that Chicago is arguably the most quintessential American city"<ref>Sampson, Robert J. (2012). "Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect" (p. 77) University of Chicago Press, Chicago</ref> was central to Robert J. Sampson's landmark research on communities, criminology, and urban sociology, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (2012)
• "The City Beautiful" – a reference to the eponymous reform movement sparked by the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893,<ref>Levy, John M. (2009) Contemporary Urban Planning.</ref> used by Hawk Harrelson when the Chicago White Sox open a game at U.S. Cellular Field
• "The 312" – a reference to the city's original area code under the North American Numbering Plan before the overlays of area code 773, area code 872, and now even later Area codes 708 and 464.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• "Paris on the Prairie" - a name from Daniel Burnham's "Plan for Chicago".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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See also

• List of city nicknames in Illinois
• List of songs about Chicago
• Nicknames of Detroit
• Nicknames of New York City

References

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