"City of Light"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>We've been through enough fair-based and city-nickname-relevant
>etymythologies that when I saw this little story I immediately began
>to wonder:  Is "the City of Light" as a sobriquet for Paris really
>traceable back to the Paris Fair of 1900 ....

I would casually assume that "City of Light[s]" (I've seen it both ways)
for Paris is a (good or bad) translation of something(s) French. Surely the
general idea is much older than 1900. EB says "Ville Lumie`re" for Paris
dates from the EnLIGHTenment (i.e. I guess 18th century?).

But there's no reason why French PR writers couldn't have used the same
expression or a very similar one as a double-entendre slogan for the 1900
Fair, at least partly to celebrate the electric light I suppose.

I'm sure the truth is well known, but since I'm incompetent in French maybe
I'm not well equipped to look for it.

-- Doug Wilson