Was Manhattan Called Gotham?

The first time Gotham City is named in the Batman comics is in the issue #4 when the writer, Bill Finger, wanted to give a more vague setting and changed the name from Manhattan to Gotham. It was 1940.

Is New York City also called Gotham?

"Gotham" has been a nickname for New York City that first became popular in the nineteenth century; Washington Irving had first attached it to New York in the November 11, 1807 edition of his Salmagundi, a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics.

Why is NYC called Gotham?

Translated, Gotham Means “Goat's Town”

Irving borrowed the name from the English village of Gotham, known in the Middle Ages as the home of “simple-minded fools.” The word possibly translates to “Goat's Town” in the old Anglo-Saxon language, an animal then considered to be foolish.