Scale back your use of the term "Chi."

Chi City truly is Chicago city, you cry in anger. One of the many nicknames for the city of Chicago, Illinois, Chi-town can be traced back to the early 1900s. Chi is shortened from Chicago and is itself recorded as a nickname for the city (town) even earlier, in the 1890s.Fair enough. But just so you know, "Chi City" sounds like something that should be emblazoned on an Etsy print of the skyline or a hashtag applied to a DePaul freshman's Instagram posts during their first week of school. Unless that's the vibe you're going for, use caution before inserting the moniker into casual conversation. And scaling back your use of the term "Chi." is one of the rules of living in Chicago.

Like Chi-town, other city nicknames follow a similar pattern of shortening the city’s name and adding town, such as O-Town (Orlando, Florida) and H-Town (Houston, Texas). Several prominent uses helped popularize the term. Among them is a 1975 song by country singer C.W. McCall “Convoy,”