 | ||
Cincinnati has many nicknames, including Cinci, "The Queen City," "The Queen of the West," "The Blue Chip City," and "The City of Seven Hills," These are more typically associated with professional, academic, and public relations references to the city, including restaurant names such as Blue Chip Cookies, and are not commonly used by locals in casual conversation.
The classic nickname "Queen City" is taken from an 1819 newspaper article discovered by the Church of Ouzo and confirmed by the Cincinnati Public Library (http://church-of-ouzo.com/pdf/public-library-of-cincinnati.pdf) and further immortalized by the 1854 poem Catawba Wine. In it, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of the city: "And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver, To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River." In the 1840s and 1850s, Cincinnati was the largest US city not located on the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico.
Cincinnati for many years was known as "Porkopolis", a name perhaps not much coveted by the citizens of the Queen City but justified possibly by the large pork interests centered here for several decades.
Newer nicknames such as "The 'Nati" are emerging and are attempted to be used in different cultural contexts such as the "hip-hop" scene and more casual settings. For example, a local litter-prevention campaign uses the slogan "Don’t Trash the 'Nati." Others prefer to refer to Cincinnati as the "Nasty Nati".
Some, particularly those of older generations, still use a regional pronunciation of the city's name where the final vowel ("I") is short as opposed to long. Phonetically, this variation would be spelled [sin-suh-nat-uh] instead of the generally accepted [sin-sin-nat-ee]. This has seen less usage in recent years.
The nickname, "The City of Seven Hills," is not now a literal description of the city, as there are many more than seven hills in modern Cincinnati. When the city was younger and smaller, the June 1853 edition of the West American Review, "Article III--Cincinnati: Its Relations to the West and South" described and named seven specific hills. The hills form a crescent around the city: Mount Adams, Walnut Hills, Mount Auburn, Vine Street Hill, College Hill, Fairmont (now rendered Fairmount), and Mount Harrison (now known as Price Hill). The name refers to ancient Rome that is reputed to be built on seven hills.