Revision History

loadingDate    Editor    Name ID    Change Summary
4/25/2021, 10:07 PM Mike C gotham added (from user-submitted name 257565)
3/11/2017, 4:10 AM Beautiful Victory

Type Settlement

Meaning & History

From Old English gat "goat" and ham "home". This is the name of a town in Nottinghamshire, famous for folk tales about its inhabitants pretending to be imbeciles in order to avoid a visit from the king. Based on this tale, writer Washington Irving applied the name to New York City in his satirical periodical Salmagundi (1807). Subsequently, Gotham or Gotham City was used as the setting of the Batman comics, starting 1940.