This article lists nicknames for the city of

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Windy City

Second City

"Second City" originates as an insult from a series of articles in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' 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 New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He complains about Chicago's economic decline, rampant organized crime and political corruption, declining population, outdated schools of thought, and general dependency on the cities along the east coast. The Chicago-based

improv comedy Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, a ...

group

The Second City The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the oldest ongoing improvisational theater troupe to be continually based in Chicago, with training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre o ...

references Liebling's book in their self-mocking name. In 2011, Chicago announced its adoption of the slogan "Second to None", a protest stance directly referring to Liebling's publications. It was replaced with another in 2022. An etymology popularized by tour guides suggests that it refers to the rebuilding of the city following the

Great Chicago Fire The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago during October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 10 ...

in 1871.

Chi-town

"Chi-town", "Chi-Town", or "Chitown" ( ) 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 Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

. Despite many mentions by well-known figures in popular works, such as C. W. McCall's song "

Convoy A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support and can help maintain cohesion within a unit. It may also be used ...

", its popularity as a nickname used by locals is disputed. Wendy McClure wrote in the '' Chicago Reader'' in 2017 that it is the "

cilantro Coriander (;

of nicknames": its distastefulness depends on who is using it. 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.

City of Big Shoulders

"City of Big Shoulders" is a nickname coined by Carl Sandburg in his 1914 poem "Chicago (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 cities major industrial activities, for example the meat-packing industry and Rail transportation in the United States, railroad industry. It is also sometimes said as the "City of Broad Shoulders".

Chiberia

"Chiberia"a portmanteau of "Chicago" and "Siberia" was coined by Richard Castro, a meteorologist working for CBS Chicago, during Early 2014 North American cold wave, a cold wave in 2014 that brought the coldest temperatures to the city in multiple decades. The National Weather Service used the hashtag "#Chiberia" during its reporting on the cold wave. The nickname continues to be used during cold weather events, for example in 2017 and January–February 2019 North American cold wave, in 2019.

Chiraq

"Chiraq"a portmanteau of "Chicago" and "Iraq"controversially compares the city (given Crime in Chicago, its crime rates) to Iraq War, war-torn Iraq. Chuck Goudie, a reporter for ABC7 Chicago, asserted that the nickname is based off a single misleading 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 statistic omits civilian deaths in Iraq, which dramatically raises its death toll. The origin of the nickname is not definitive, but saw increasing popularity in usage around the end of the Iraq War. For example, Spike Lee used the nickname as the title of Chi-Raq, his 2015 film, Lil Reese used it in his 2013 song "Traffic", and Urban Dictionary added it as an entry in 2012.

City in a Garden

In the 1830s, the government of Chicago adopted the motto "", a Latin term that translates to 'City in a Garden'. It is displayed in the city's seal. The Chicago Park District adopted a seal in 1934 that contains the Latin phrase , meaning 'Garden in a City'.

Great Commercial Tree

"Great Commercial Tree" comes from the lyrics of the Illinois (song), state anthem of Illinois: "... Till upon Lake Michigan, the inland sea, stands thy great commercial tree..."

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 * "City by the Lake" – used as early as the 1890s * "The City that Works" – slogan from Richard J. Daley's tenure as Mayor of Chicago, mayor, describing Chicago as a blue-collar, hard-working city, which ran relatively smoothly * "Heart of America" – Chicago is one of the largest transportation centers in America, and its location was once near the center of the United States. * "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"; "the notion that Chicago is arguably the most quintessential American city" was central to Robert J. Sampson's landmark research on communities, criminology, and urban sociology, ''Great American City, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect'' (2012) * "The City Beautiful" – reference to the City Beautiful movement, eponymous reform movement sparked by the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893,Levy, John M. (2009) Contemporary Urban Planning. 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 and later area code 872. * "Paris on the Prairie" - a name from Daniel Burnham's "Plan for Chicago".

References

{{Chicago Chicago-related lists, Nicknames for Chicago Culture of Chicago Lists of nicknames by city, Chicago Names of places in the United States