New York Gets Called Gotham

In the November 11, 1807 issue of Salmagundi, a biweekly satirical pamphlet he wrote with his brother William Irving Jr. and their friend James Kirke Paulding, Washington Irving referred to New York City as "the thrice renowned and delectable city of GOTHAM." He was borrowing the name from Gotham, Nottinghamshire, an English village whose folklore held that its residents once feigned madness to scare off King John's men and their plans for an expensive royal road. Irving and his co-authors, writing under invented names like Launcelot Langstaff, used the label to needle the vanity and self-importance of New York's high society and its politicians. Salmagundi ran for twenty issues between January 24, 1807, and January 15, 1808, published by David Longworth, and the nickname it coined as a joke outlived the magazine by more than two centuries.