Introduction: A City of Many Names on Ancient Ground
Before New York City earned its famous nickname, “the Big Apple,” the land beneath its skyscrapers was known to its original inhabitants as Lenapehoking—the homeland of the Lenape people, whose villages, trails, and trading networks dotted Manhattan Island long before Dutch and English colonists arrived. The story of how a modern nickname actually includes the much deeper story of the city itself: a place renamed by colonizers, fought over by empires, and finally rebranded through horseracing, jazz, and tourism. Understanding why New York is called the Big Apple means tracing a surprising path through African American stable hands in New Orleans, jazz musicians of the 1930s, and a 1970s tourism campaign—while remembering that the city’s oldest names belong to the Indigenous nations who first called the region home.
Before the Apple: Lenapehoking and the Colonial Renaming of Manhattan
Long before it was New York, New Amsterdam, or even New Orange, the island of Manhattan lay within Lenapehoking. The Lenape—a people whose territory spanned present-day New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and the lower Hudson Valley—fished the surrounding waters, cultivated maize, beans, and squash, and maintained seasonal settlements across the region. In 1626, Dutch West India Company official Peter Minuit negotiated the famous transaction with local Lenape for the use of Manhattan, an event often mischaracterized as a straightforward “sale” but better understood as a misunderstood agreement between peoples with very different concepts of land and land use.
The city’s colonial history directly connects to the nickname’s lesser-known chapter. In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch naval force recaptured the city from the English and renamed it New Orange in honor of William III of Orange, who would later become King of England. The name lasted less than a year. Under the Treaty of Westminster of 1674, the city reverted to English control and its former name, New York—an exchange of imperial flags. For the Lenape and neighboring Haudenosaunee peoples of the region, these European contests over territory had far more devastating and lasting consequences than any nickname, as colonial expansion gradually dispossessed Indigenous communities of the land itself.
The Real Origin: How Horseracing Gave New York Its Famous Nickname
John Fitz Gerald and the Stable Hands of New Orleans
Contrary to popular assumption, the Big Apple nickname has nothing to do with fruit production—even though New York state remains one of America’s leading apple growers, second only to Washington state. The moniker was born in the world of horseracing.
Around 1920, John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph whose beat covered thoroughbred racing, traveled to New Orleans. There he heard African American stable hands and horsemen refer to New York City’s racetracks as “the big apple”—meaning the big time, the premier venues where a horseman could make a name for himself. In an era when Black horsemen exercised enormous influence on American racing—dominating the sport as jockeys, trainers, and stable workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—this in-group slang carried the voice of experience and aspiration.
Fitz Gerald embraced the term wholeheartedly. His column soon carried the title “Around the Big Apple,” and he explained in print that he had adopted the expression from the Black stable hands he met in New Orleans. By documenting the phrase, Fitz Gerald preserved an important piece of African American contribution to the city’s identity—one that might otherwise have been lost entirely.
Jazz Musicians and the Big-league Connection
By the 1930s, jazz musicians had adopted the term in a parallel migration of language. Just as racetrack workers saw New York as the ultimate destination, jazz artists recognized the city as home to the big-league music clubs of Harlem and beyond. “The Big Apple” became a symbol of arrival—of making it to the place where the finest stages, the toughest audiences, and the greatest players converged. This overlap is fitting: the nickname traveled through communities of Black laborers and artists whose contributions shaped American culture profoundly, even as those same communities faced the segregation and limited opportunity from the 1920s through the 1940s.
The jazz connection mattered for another reason—it preserved the nickname after Fitz Gerald’s columns faded. Later jazz oral histories collected by amateur etymologists in the 1980s and 1990s confirmed the term’s currency among Black musicians of the era, corroborating the stable-hand origins with firsthand testimony.
The Decline and 1970s Revival of the Big Apple
By mid-century, the nickname had quietly faded from popular use. Its revival came in the early 1970s, when Charles Gillett, president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, launched a tourism campaign to improve the city’s battered image. At the time, New York faced serious economic troubles and high crime rates, and municipal leaders worried the city’s reputation was in freefall.
Gillett, a jazz enthusiast, knew the term’s history. The campaign adopted the apple as its emblem, producing pins, T-shirts, and promotional materials inviting tourists to “take a bite out of the Big Apple.” This time, the name stuck permanently. The 1970s campaign is a reminder of how historical language can be recovered and repurposed—though few tourists knew the phrase originated with African American stable workers rather than advertising executives.
Indigenous New York: The Names Beneath the Nickname
While the Big Apple story spans only a century, the deeper history of the region reminds us that names carry power. The word Manhattan itself is believed to derive from the Lenape language, most plausibly referring to the island’s gathering place or its hills. New York’s rivers—the Hudson, known to the Mohican people as the Muhheakantuck, and the East River—carry Indigenous names older than any colonial title. Trade between Dutch colonists and regional peoples often relied on wampum, the purple and white shell beads crafted from quahog and whelk shells that served ceremonial and diplomatic purposes throughout the Northeast.
The broader displacement of Native communities in New York and beyond, driven by war and treaty-making such as the conflicts examined in histories of the French and Indian War, reshaped the region long before horseracing journalists arrived to name its city anew. Today, Lenape descendants live in federally recognized communities in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario—far from the island their ancestors called home, a reminder that the city’s most famous nickname is only the newest chapter in a much older story.
Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways
- The nickname is not about fruit. It originated in horseracing slang around 1920, documented by New York sportswriter John Fitz Gerald after he heard African American stable hands in New Orleans use “the big apple” to mean New York’s premier racetracks.
- Jazz musicians spread the term in the 1930s, using it to signal that New York hosted big-league music clubs—embedding the nickname in Black American cultural history.
- The 1970s revival was a tourism campaign led by Charles Gillett of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, aimed at countering the city’s economic and crime-related image problems.
- The city’s earlier name, New Orange (1673–1674), honored William III of Orange during the brief Dutch recapture, before the Treaty of Westminster restored English control—itself another layer of European renaming atop Indigenous Lenapehoking.
- Scholarly consensus credits the trailblazing etymological research of amateur historians William and Helen Crolley in the 1990s—backed by jazz oral histories—as the basis for the city’s official recognition of Fitz Gerald’s role, acknowledged by a 1997 mayoral proclamation at the corner of Broadway and West 54th Street, where his newspaper once stood.
- Cultural significance: The nickname illustrates how working-class Black communities—stable hands and jazz artists—authored one of America’s most recognized city brands, long before institutions claimed it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is New York City called the Big Apple?
The nickname originated in horseracing slang. Around 1920, New York sportswriter John Fitz Gerald heard African American stable hands in New Orleans refer to New York City’s racetracks—then considered the nation’s premier “big-time” venues—as “the big apple.” He popularized the phrase in his newspaper columns. Jazz musicians expanded its use in the 1930s, and a 1970s tourism campaign led by Charles Gillett cemented it permanently.
Does the Big Apple nickname come from New York’s apple orchards?
No. Although New York state is one of America’s top apple-producing states, second only to Washington, the nickname has no connection to fruit production. Its documented origins lie in racetrack culture and jazz slang.
What was New York City called before it was New York?
Under Dutch rule it was New Amsterdam. In 1673, when the Dutch briefly recaptured the city from the English, they renamed it New Orange in honor of William III of Orange. The name lasted only about a year—the city reverted to English control and the name New York in 1674 under the Treaty of Westminster. Long before all of this, the land was Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people.
Who revived the Big Apple nickname in the 1970s?
Charles Gillett, president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau and a jazz enthusiast, launched the tourism campaign in the early 1970s. The city distributed apple-themed pins, T-shirts, and souvenirs inviting visitors to “take a bite out of the Big Apple,” successfully reviving the old jazz-era term during a period of urban decline.
Where can I learn more about the Indigenous history of New York City?
Manhattan and the surrounding region were home to the Lenape for centuries before European contact, and to neighboring peoples connected with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Mohican communities to the north. Museums such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan and cultural programs led by Lenape descendant communities preserve and share this history. Exploring broader Native American cultural traditions reveals how deeply names, land, and memory remain intertwined in the New York region.
Conclusion: Cultural Legacy and Enduring Memory
The Big Apple is a rare example of a city-brand born not from marketing genius but from the everyday speech of African American stable hands and jazz musicians—communities whose historical contributions were often overlooked. Yet the nickname’s history also invites us to peel the apple back further, to the Lenape people of Manhattan and the successive waves of renaming—New Amsterdam, New Orange, New York—that transformed an Indigenous homeland into a global metropolis. The next time someone asks why New York is called the Big Apple, the answer can honor both the racetrack and the riverbank, the sportswriter and the stable hand, the jazzman and the Lenape—every layer of memory that made the city what it is today.
