Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on FacebookTwitterPinterest, or on her author website.

Maybe you already know this. But I stumbled onto it as I was working on book three in my Safe Lands series. I needed to name an area of my city, and I wanted it to sound cool, like a nickname. I was thinking of some of the areas in Manhattan, like SoHo, and decided to do a little research. I discovered that the name SoHo refers to the area south of Houston Street. (Get it? SOuth or HOuston Street?)

I knew this already from the time I spent going to college in Manhattan. But what I didn’t know was that it was named by Chester Rapkin, an urban planner who, according to his obituary in the New York Times, “first used the term SoHo in a 1962 study of the community, while he was chairman of the University of Pennsylvania’s urban study group.”

This started a trend for nicknaming areas in New York City. Consider the following list:
-DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass)
-NoHo (NOrth of HOuston Street)
-Nolita (NOrth of Little ITAly)
-NoMad (NOrth of MADison Square Park)
-SoHa (SOuth of HArlem)
-TriBeCa (TRIangle BElow CAnal Street)

So I came up with one of my own.
-Cibelo (CIty BELOw the _______ ) I can’t say what or I might spoil book three, and book two isn’t even out yet!

Ever use a catchy acronym in your writing?