what's in a name?

Today Whitebait is chained to his Tokyo desk, taking his turn working on a draft of a major university grant application that he is putting in for with his colleague, the Sheepwoman. These applications require an horrendous amount of work (and only have a 27% success rate which is further mitigated by a number of formal and informal factors including your relative seniority and track record, the 'class' of institution you belong to, the quality of your project, and the random luck of draw of who ends up assessing it on the day and whether they got out of the right or wrong side of bed). Overall, pointy-heads in Australia like to grumble about many aspects of them (e.g, they suck up time otherwise reserved for doing actual research), but the applications do at least have a clearly useful function in making the applicants think long and hard about their bigger project, its relevant literature, research questions and methodologies etc.

Whitebait and Sheepwoman's project is on the notion of urban rivalry and comparison.  Something W. was very interested in as part of his recent (see below) trip to Osaka. Amongst the comparisons spotted in some of the literature include historical references to Osaka as the 'Manchester of the East'. This led him today to google 'Paris of the Orient' while wondering how many of these imperial/colonial forms of comparison existed. Answer: a number. And he then found this fascinating wikipedia page which list city nicknames. It is a wonderfully eccentric list. Some surprises, old favourites and bizarre ones :

Melbourne: 'Bleak capital of the world' [does anyone know the origin of this? - W]

Auckland: 'Sydney for Beginners'

Chicago: 'Paris of the Midwest', 'Second City', 'City of Big Shoulders'

Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines: 'Locust City'

Messina: 'Rebirthing City'

Warsaw: 'Default City' (popular in Polish usenet community)

Farjado, Puerto Rico: 'Hardface city'

 

Comments

[Laura]

Bleak Capital of the World?? way harsh. I was surprised not to see "Marvellous Melbourne" in that list. Maybe it's too old.

[Ampersandduck]

Canberra: a city, not a Government. (or, in less polite terms, 'Capital, not a pack of c**ts')

[whitebait]

Hi Laura - thanks for your comment. Yes, 'bleak capital' is pretty harsh. Sheepwoman just mentioned in an email that she thought Chicago was once called this--and you could maybe understand it given the tough climate and location--but Melbourne? A strange one. 'Marvellous Melbourne' should be in there (surely Jeff Kennett resurrected that in his musicals led revival?).

Ampersand D - gold!

[ari]

perhaps the 'bleak city' thing came about after 'on the beach' was shot in melbourne in the '50's... the film is about a nucleal holocaust after all.

[whitebait]

Thanks for the comment Ari. I reckon that is a pretty convincing explanation for the origin of the nickname. In any case, there is no doubt that the wacky film in question is certainly the most convincing articulation of 'bleak Melbourne'. It was only recently that I first heard the nickname itself being used in mainstream press when the acting NSW premier identified it as the reason for his state rugby league team losing to Queensland in their State of Origin game played here.