What is in a Town’s Nickname?

By Jinks: 06 October 2025

Chicago.

New York City.

Arequipa.

Paris.

What do all of these cities have in common besides buildings, people, and attractions?

If you guessed that each of them have a nickname, then you would be correct.

As an adventurer, I have been traveling around the world over the last several months, gaining new experiences, seeing new places, and learning about new cultures. Those were all expected when I first packed my bag and hopped on an airplane, but what wasn’t expected was all of the other things that came along with travel.

On top of those three things, I have gained a ton of new friends, thousands of photos, and numerous stories and story ideas. I have also gained lots of questions, and one of these questions has been plaguing my mind for months.

What is in a town’s nickname?

I’m sure most people reading this will have heard towns and cities referred to by their nicknames, and I’m sure some have even used those names themselves. But, out of curiosity, how many of those individuals have ever questioned why those nicknames exist in the first place? How many have asked how did Chicago get the name ‘The Windy City’ or why is New York City referred to as ‘The Big Apple?’

Thos are all questions of mine, but I never questioned it until I arrived in Peru and found another city with a nickname, Arequipa AKA The White City.

In terms of answering why it received that name, the answer is because Arequipa is surrounded by several volcanoes and the original buildings are constructed using the ash from those volcanoes, and the ash gave the buildings a white coloring.

Even knowing that answer was not enough to cause me to question all of the other names. What caused that was going on a city tour of Arequipa and having the guide give a long and detailed answer about how the city got the name. Once I knew there was a reason for one city, my curiosity was piqued and made me wonder about the reasoning for other nicknamed cities in the world.

Mind you, I still have not researched all of the cities and have only done a brief dive into some of them. So, if you expected me to give you the reason for those, then I will have to disappoint you since that was not my intended purpose for this post. If you want those answers, there are numerous sources out there, but if you want to know why I’ve been pondering these questions, then feel free to continue reading.

The true purpose of this post it to question those names from the perspective of a writer.

As a writer, my goal is to create worlds and stories that people can relate to using words alone. It is not an easy task, but I have found that it gets easier through a few different means. One is to keep writing and practicing the craft, one is to read and find out how others manage, one is to join a writing group and have others critique your work in exchange for critiquing theirs.

And while those do work for me, I have found there is another method that I really like and that is to gain new experiences. The saying goes ‘Write what you know,’ so why wouldn’t traveling and gaining new experiences help with your writing?

No one actually expects a person to travel to a foreign planet, discover a new race of life forms, and win an intergalactic civil war before they write a story about that. It is not feasible. But what is possible is to travel to a new country and interact with the locals. As a writer, that knowledge can be used to help create a foreign planet and people, which, in turn, can help determine how a person from Earth would interact with those individuals.

With that in mind, I will say my interpretation of writing what you know is about ensuring that what you write is relatable. Relatability is key in helping your readers follow the story.

Now it is time to return to the initial topic of city nicknames and combine it with the idea of relatability.

So, let me pose a new question for you. How can you incorporate the idea of city nicknames into your stories?

My answer to that question, and I say mine since it may be different than yours, is to choose a name, create a nickname, and know the reason for the nickname. You don’t have to write the reason in the story, since one of the things to avoid when world building is giving too much information, but you should know it on the off chance that someone asks you, as the writer, or a character asks another character because of curiosity.

The reason doesn’t even have to make a ton of sense. Arequipa’s name is obvious, Detroit is ‘Motor City’ because of the auto manufactures, Kansas City is ‘The City of Fountains’ because there are so many fountains, but New York City is ‘The Big Apple’ and there really isn’t a definitive reason why someone started calling it that.

So, if real cities can acquire nicknames from tons of different reasons, why can’t a writer use some obscure reason when designing a fictional town?

I will say, before I call it a day, is that I fully plan to give all major cities in my stories a nickname, partially to make them more relatable, but partially to have a chance to be more creative with my world building.

Hopefully that made sense to you and, if it did, hopefully it gives you some more ideas when it comes to your own writing.