Question: how did new york city get the nickname "gotham"? 

Answer: Gotham was first used in reference to New York City by Washington Irving in the satirical piece Salmagundi (1807). Gotham was at that point already known to refer to a place with "foolish inhabitants." Somehow the name stuck to NYC, even though it had originally been a nickname for Nottinghamshire (a village in England where, apparently, wise men acted as fools in order to avoid paying for the king's upkeep).
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