CITY OF MANY NAMES
Is Chicago “The Great American City”? Learn 11 Of The City’s Nicknames
Published on October 17, 2024
Image: Sawyer Bengtson
Chicago is not even that windy. Anyone who’s also been to Amarillo, Texas, or Boston, Massachusetts can tell you that. So, why and when did we start referring to Chicago as "the Windy City"? Or "Second City"? Or Chiberia, Chitown, or the City of Big Shoulders? Chicago is the third largest city in the U.S. and has a long-standing history as a beacon of culture, architecture, industry, and technology. Let’s explore the origin of the many names that journalists, artists, and residents have come up with throughout the decades.
Windy City
Image: Rezal Scharfe
Did you know that Chicago wasn’t the first "Windy City"? No, the first city to be given that title was Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was called that as early as 1856. However, twenty years later, a great rivalry between Cincinnati and Chicago was unfolding. In an effort to mock the town that was its sports and meatpacking rival, Cincinnati’s press started to repeatedly refer to their neighbor town as "that windy city".
The nickname stuck, even though Chicago isn’t even among the 10 windiest cities in the U.S. The top spot is said to belong to Amarillo, Texas, which has an annual average wind speed of 12.9 miles per hour.
Second City
Image: Gautam Krishnan
There is a misconception that Chicago gave itself this nickname after successfully rebuilding and recovering from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Historians insist that this is not where the name originated and that there are no documents to back that story.
"Second City," just like "Windy City," was born out of mockery. Towards the end of the 19th century, after having annexed neighboring suburbs, Chicago had, in fact, become the second-largest city in the U.S. by population. The title fluctuated over time to refer to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and then back to Chicago. But in 1952, a publication by New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling settled it forever. He had lived in Chicago for a few months, which was long enough for him to decide he hated it. Lebling wrote a humorous recollection called Chicago: The Second City, poking fun at it, and the text became so popular that the moniker stuck.
Chitown
Image: Sawyer Bengtson
The first recorded use of this term appears in the1890s. Back then, a trend was to call important cities by their first letter or letters and add "town". Thus words like O-Town (for Orlando), H-Town (for Houston), and Chi-Town (for Chicago) were formed.
Chicago’s shortened version can also be found as "Chi-Town" or "Chi-town". Even though some official organizations have adopted the tag and run with it (for events like the Chi-Town Rumble or the Chi-Town Rising), some citizens of Chicago dislike it and cringe at its use.
City of Big Shoulders
Image: Josh Howard
In 1914, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg published his poem "Chicago." This one was the first in a long series titled Chicago Poems, which celebrates and praises the industrial and cultural endeavors of Sandburg’s chosen home.
"City of Big Shoulders" appears in the fifth line of the free verse poem, right after describing the city as "Stormy, husky, brawling." That is only one of the names Sandburg uses throughout the text. Another of the nicknames that stuck through time is the one that opens the poem: "Hog Butcher for the World," referring to the city’s iconic meatpacking industry.
Chiberia
Image: Nimisha Mekala
You might have guessed that "Chiberia" is a portmanteau of "Chicago" and "Siberia", and you might have guessed why. Chicago is not the coldest city in the country. However, in 2014, it came close to breaking its cold temperature record which had been in place since 1983, when it had reached −57°F (−49°C).
During that historically low cold wave of 2014, Richard Castro, a National Weather Service meteorologist, coined the term online. On his way to work one February day, Castro came up with that term and tweeted it. The tweet went viral, and other news media picked it up. Soon, "Chiberia" flooded gift shops appearing in sweatshirts and mugs. The nickname has been used since then as a reminder of Chicago’s harsh weather.
City in a Garden
Image: Nancy Bourque
This name is a direct translation of the motto adopted by the government of Chicago in the 1830s: Urbs in Horto. In Latin, this means "City in a Garden," and it is written on the city’s seal. In the 19th century, however, the motto did not refer to the present or future, but to the past. It was a nod towards the prairies and beaches that existed in the Chicago area before the expansion of the city.
Nowadays, the green spaces in Chicago have expanded to cover 8,000 acres. That is 8.3% of the city’s size. The largest ones are Lincoln Park and Burnham Park.
Great Commercial Tree
Image: Trace Hudson
This name is the reference that appears in the state anthem of Illinois: "...Till upon the inland sea, stands thy great commercial tree." The words were written by Civil War veteran Charles H. Chamberlin in 1890. That year, a campaign was in place to host the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and composing the Illinois State Song was one of their strategies. The campaign was successful and the event is now remembered as the Chicago World’s Fair.
The song features plenty of references to nature, including the prairies, rivers, and wilderness found in the state. Within it, Chicago stands out in the second verse, referenced in the lines "Till upon the inland sea, stands thy great commercial tree, turning all the world to thee, Illinois, Illinois."
My Kind of Town
Image: Phil
This tagline is beloved by tourism agencies promoting the city. Its origin is in a tune sung by Frank Sinatra in the 1964 movie Robin and the 7 Hoods. In the film, Sinatra’s character, Robin, is greeted by a cheering crowd when he comes out of jail. In celebration and gratitude, he sings, "This is my kind of town, Chicago is."
Interestingly, some years earlier, Sinatra had popularized another song referencing the city: "Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town)." The name references Toddle, a dance style that had been famous in the city in the 1920s when the song was first published. Since the release of Sinatra’s version of that song, "That Toddling Town" has become another nickname for Chicago.
The Third Coast
Image: Muzammil Soorma
We know that Chicago is not on the East Coast or the West Coast. It is instead on what is sometimes colloquially called the Third Coast of the U.S., referring to the area of the Great Lakes. Even though Michigan is the state with the longest shoreline of the 48 lower states, Chicago has earned this nickname for being the largest city in the Great Lakes region.
What helped further solidify the nickname for Chicago was the book The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, published by author Thomas Dyja in 2013.
The White City
Image: Matt & Chris Pua
This nickname was born from the aforementioned 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair). The same fair also gave rise to the label "The City Beautiful." That was the name given to an architectural and urban planning movement that sought to beautify the main cities of the countries.
The fair was an opportunity to display some of the principles proposed by this movement. For this purpose, an exposition was directed by architect Daniel Burnham. His team built a modern city showcasing classical uniform buildings, all painted in white, in a style that would become known as monumentalism. This model city was called the "White City." Both this and "The City Beautiful" have become enduring references to Chicago.
The Great American City
Image: Gautam Krishnan
This last nickname comes from the notion shared by some writers that Chicago is the last Great American City. Yes, even greater than New York, they claim. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer made that grand statement in his book Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968).
Something similar was declared by Robert J. Sampson’s 2012 study Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. In this study, he proposed that Chicago was "arguably the most quintessential American city." Chicagoans, of course, were proud of these labels, and some have used the term to crown the city ever since.
