Naming in New York #1
by V.E. on July 25th, 2009
New York City has an interesting naming scheme.
That is, in Queens, there are districts which are cities, like Flushing, Astoria, Bayside, Oakland Gardens, and the like. One of those names—not “Queens”—is what you write in the “city” section of any postal mail. If you’re sending something to Manhattan, you write “New York”, even though Manhattan also has districts: Little Italy, the Financial District, TriBeCa (more on capitalization in a minute), Harlem, and the Upper West Side. If you’re sending something to Brooklyn, you write “Brooklyn”, even though there are districts in Brooklyn, too, like Bensonhurst, Brownside, Bed-Sty, and Coney Island. If sending to Staten Island, you write “Staten Island”—and I don’t even know what you’d write for the Bronx because I never went up there and know nearly nothing about it except the D, 2, and 4/5/6 lines go up there. (And even that I had to look up in my handy dandy subway map. >_>)
As for capitalization: there are districts in the various boroughs (New York City is made up of five parts, called boroughs, which are: the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan) that have odd capitalization… DUMBO, TriBeCa, NoHo, and SoHo are the four most well-known. People outside the City usually don’t know what the capitalization means, and honestly: you’d have to be there to understand it. DUMBO means “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”; TriBeCa is “Triangle beneath Canal (St.)”; NoHo stands for “North of Houston (St.)”; SoHo means “South of Houston (St.)”…
It makes sense when it’s explained, but there are other confusing precautions New Yorkers take to keep their City their own. More in “Naming in New York #2″!
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[...] in New York #2 Filed under: blogathon, words — V.E. @ 02:15:29 Sunday, 26 July 2009 In Naming in New York #1, I mentioned districts, counties, and capitalization. In this part, I’ll be covering three [...]