17 December 2007
The People’s Republic of Camberville?
There’s a great thread over at Ask MetaFilter right now about nicknames for towns and cities. Someone posted:
Do you know a derogatory nickname for a town or city?
I’m interested in renaming as a form of unofficial culture, folk culture. Sometimes the new name carries a weight of opinion - one type of renaming is to give a locality an insulting version of its real name…For instance, my hometown of Red Bank was called “Dead Bank” by its disaffected teens…I’d love to assemble some more recent name versions. I understand that some of these (”Jew York”) might not always be PC…
Among the responses people are giving include quite a few Massachusetts locales. Slumerville or Scumerville get quite a few mentions, and everyone points out those nicknames are not quite en vogue these days. Others include the presently-hip Camberville as well as: Lynn - City of Sin, rATHOLe for Athol, and the ubiquitous Taxachusetts.
There is also an interesting discussion about whether “The People’s Republic of Cambridge” can be considered a derogatory nickname for Cambridge because, as one poster says: “It’s pretty much been fully embraced by the city, and if Ann Coulter rolled into town calling people ‘Liberals’, they’d smile as though she meant to compliment them.” The label “derogatory” is of course relative: “People’s Republic” is hardly a concern these days, but I can’t imagine it was coined at a time when Communist titles were thrown around lovingly in the U.S.
