Words and Their Stories: Nicknames for New Orleans and Las Vegas
From The Big Easy to Sin City
13 March 2010
Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
Many cities have interesting nicknames. Nicknames can help establish the identity of a city. They can also spread pride among its citizens.
New Orleans, Louisiana probably has more nicknames than any other American city. One web site lists more than twenty nicknames. The most famous is
The Big Easy.
It describes the gentle, slow and easy-going way of life in New Orleans.
So how did the city get this nickname? In the early nineteen hundreds, there was a dance hall in New Orleans called The Big Easy. But the nickname did not become famous until the early nineteen seventies. That was when a Louisiana newspaper writer began calling New Orleans by this name. She compared the easy-going way of life there to the hurried pace of life in New York City.
In nineteen seventy, James Conaway wrote a crime novel called “The Big Easy.” The story was set in New Orleans. In nineteen eighty-seven, that book was made into a film which made the nickname even more popular.
New Orleans has other nicknames. One of them is
The Crescent City
. During the nineteenth century, new neighborhoods expanded out from what is now known as the French Quarter. These areas followed the great curve of the Mississippi River, giving New Orleans the shape of a crescent.
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