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Origin of name

Writer Bill Finger on the naming of the city and reasoning for changing Batman's locale from Manhattan to a fictional city: "Originally I was going to call Gotham City 'Civic City'. Then I tried 'Capital City', then 'Coast City'. Then I flipped through the phone book and spotted the name 'Gotham Jewelers' and said, 'That's it', Gotham City. We didn't call it New York because we didn't want anybody in any city to identify with it."[1] "Gotham" had long been a well-known nickname for New York City even prior to Batman's 1939 introduction,[2] which explains why "Gotham Jewelers" and many other businesses in New York City have the word "Gotham" in them. The name Gotham was first popularized as a nickname for New York City in the nineteenth century periodical Salmagundi.

"Gotham" has been a nickname for New York City originating in 1807 by Washington Irving in his Salmagundi Papers. Salmagundi lampooned New York culture and politics in a manner much like today's Mad magazine. It was in the November 11, 1807 issue that Irving first attached the name "Gotham" to New York City.[5]

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Gotham City's geography, like other fictional cities' geographies in the DC Universe, has varied over the decades, because of changing writers, editors and storylines. The majority of appearances place Gotham on the Northeastern coast of the United States, where New York City is located. However, the Atlas of the DC Universe states that Gotham is located in New Jersey, across the Delaware Bay from Metropolis.

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