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I'm more interested in why it never caught on regionally. There would rarely ever be any confusion, nobody in the states would think you were talking about York England. But it still never caught on for whatever reason.

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When feasible, spoken English favours double syllable combinations. Three is too many, one is too few for disambiguation in a lossy environment. Hence Jersey, LA, San Fran, Philly, but not York. It’s not a hard rule, of course.

Ahh that makes a lot of sense, thank you! It does feel like it's more about the syllables than anything.

> San Fran

Or SF, if you want to avoid making the people that live there mad

My SF-born mother also often calls it "The City" (though this is 3 syllables).

I think the regional name for New York is "the city".

I'm referring more to New York the state, to compare it to its neighboring state New Jersey

“The city” refers to Manhattan specifically, not New York City in general. Being in the other boroughs, you might say “I’m heading to the city later”.

Or if you're upstate and going to one of the boroughs, you'll generally refer to it by name. "I'm going to Brooklyn / Queens / the Bronx", not "I'm going to the city" or "I'm going to New York City".

I see what you are saying but one could easily go to two or more of those boroughs in single trip.

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