Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Frisco?? Oh no!

 I was mindlessly paging through my hardcopy of Americanisms, Old and New by John Stephen Farmer (1889) when my gaze landed upon this entry: "Frisco—An abbreviation of San Francisco." 

My immediate reaction (as a native of the San Francisco Bay Area) was to groan, "Oh no! Not Frisco!" And then, I began to ponder. 

When did Frisco start being used as an appellation for San Francisco? Sure, my series set in the 1880s had a character named "Frisco Flo," but I had picked that mostly because the alliteration appealed to me, not really because I was thinking of the nearby city by the bay....

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And then I got curious. What might be some of the other historical nicknames for San Francisco might have appeared in the timeframe of my historical fiction?

Americanisms to the rescue, once again! This time, I went to the online version, so I could do a quick and easy search.

Under the entry for "City," there is a long list of various cities and their alternate names. For San Francisco, we have:

• City of the Golden Gate
• Frisco
• Golden City
• City of the Hundred Hills

If you'd like to read about more recent monikers for the city that is the setting of THE SECRET IN THE WALL (#8 in the series! to be released next Tuesday!) check out this 2019 article, titled "Don't Call It Frisco: History of San Francisco Nicknames."

Don't call it Frisco, indeed.

"Frisco" was the City of the Golden Gate long before there was the bridge.
By Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu)Camera location37° 49′ 39.52″ N, 122° 29′ 56.17″ WView this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69855772