Just Askin': It's our most popular nickname. Why is Cincinnati called the Queen City?

Erin Couch, Cincinnati Enquirer
Updated ·3 min read
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The Enquirer's Just Askin' series aims to answer the questions that no one seems to have an answer for, not even Google.

The City of Seven Hills. Porkopolis. The 'Nati. We know Cincinnati by many names.

But one nickname takes the prize for our most recognizable: The Queen City.

It didn't take Cincinnati long after it was first established as a city to get that moniker. That was more than 200 years ago. Where did the nickname come from?

Why is Cincinnati called the Queen City?

The Queen City label came about more than 200 years ago when Cincinnati was first named in a newspaper as Queen of the West. That was in 1819, the same year when Cincinnati, first founded in 1788 as a settlement, officially incorporated to achieve city status.

Ohio was considered the West back then. After the Revolutionary War, Americans turned west. The Northwest Territory, between Pennsylvania and the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River, was unsettled frontier.

The Queen City is our most famous moniker. Where does the name come from?
The Queen City is our most famous moniker. Where does the name come from?

The earliest reference to the nickname, according to Xavier University, was found in the Inquisitor and Cincinnati Advertiser on May 4, 1819, when Ed. B. Cooke wrote: “The City is, indeed, justly styled the fair Queen of the West: distinguished for order, enterprise, public spirit, and liberality, she stands the wonder of an admiring world.”

It didn't take long for the name to catch on. Within a year, proud citizens were calling it the Queen City or Queen of the West.

The Queen City moniker was repeated in an 1854 poem “Catawba Wine” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The last stanza references Cincinnati.

"And this Song of the Vine,    This greeting of mine,The winds and the birds shall deliver    To the Queen of the West,    In her garlands dressed,On the banks of the Beautiful River."

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Why is Cincinnati called the Queen City?