Words and Their Stories: Nicknames for Cleveland and Detroit
April 15, 2013
Producers George Cloney, Ben Affleck, and Grant Heslov pose backstage with their Oscars® for best motion picture of the year for “Argo”.(Photo: Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S)
Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
Many American cities have interesting nicknames. Nicknames can help establish the identity of a city. They can also spread pride among its citizens. But nicknames sometimes can make fun of something.
Cleveland, Ohio is a city in America’s Midwest. One of its earliest nicknames was
Forest City
. No one knows for sure who gave it this name in the eighteen thirties. But Cleveland probably had a lot of trees. This nickname became popular among local businesses in the eighteen fifties. Today, some businesses in the Cleveland area still use Forest City in their names.
A view of Lake Erie with the Cleveland skyline in the background at Edgewater Beach in Cleveland
Cleveland sits next to Lake Erie, one of North America’s Great Lakes. It was once a major manufacturing city. Ships used the lake for transporting goods. In the nineteen fifties, businesses called Cleveland, the
Best Location in the Nation.
However, many factories closed or moved away. Cleveland had severe financial problems in the nineteen sixties and seventies. In nineteen sixty-nine, the city became famous, but not in a good way. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire because of industrial wastes on the surface of the river. So in the nineteen seventies, the national media began calling the city
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