Nicknames of Atlanta

"Chicago of the South"

"Convention City of Dixie Land"

An 1859 industrial journal was among the first to note nicknames for Atlanta, Georgia:^[1]

An orator claimed for it the signification of "a city among the hills" while a writer has declared that it was the opposite of "rus in urbe" ("country in the city") and proclaimed it "'the city in the woods".

Since then, the city has known numerous nicknames. Today, The ATL, The A, and Hotlanta are the most prevalent.

Contemporary nicknames

• Hotlanta,^[2] for its hot weather or its exciting nightlife, or both
• The ATL,^[3][2] for its airport code
• The A: It is used in local media such as Only in the A, a video channel shown on MARTA rapid transit trains in Atlanta and Straight from the A, a popular^[4] Atlanta-based blog targeted at African Americans. "The A" or "da A" is also used in hip hop and rap songs such as Ludacris and Lloyd's "How We Do It (in da A)", Lil Scrappy's "The A", and T.I.'s "In da A". Atlanta newspaper Creative Loafing listed as one of its "reasons to love Atlanta" that it's "the only city easily identified by just one letter".^[5]
• A-Town^[6]
• City in a Forest^[7] or City of Trees^[8], for its unique tree canopy
• The Big Peach^[9]

Historic nicknames

• Gate City, Gate City of the South, or Gate City of the New South (from Reconstruction through the early 20th century)^[10][11]
• New York of the South^[12] (1870s-1890s)
• Chicago of the South (1880s-1900s) - for Atlanta's "new men, new industries, new buildings, and new spirit" - though it was often remarked that the nickname was not quite accurate in terms of the size of Atlanta vs. the much larger Chicago^[13][14][15]
• The City Too Busy to Hate^[16][17] (during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights struggle)
• Dogwood City^[18]
• Convention City of Dixie (Land) (1910s-1920s)^[19][20]

References

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