"The Big Apple" research -- Barry Popik's key role

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

An Internet item on "The Big Apple" acknowledges  my work on that sobriquet but omits mention of Barry Popik.
So, for the record, after the appearance of my 1991 monograph "Origin of New York City's Nickname 'The Big Apple'
(Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang), all the major contributions that followed were made by Barry.  When I prepared the second edition of that monograph (2011), I therefore included Barry as co-author.  His work on "The Big Apple" has been truly extraordinary.

The author of the recent Internet item is Daven Hiskey, and the title of his column is "Today I Found Out: Why New York City Is Called 'The Big Apple'".  http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/new-york-called-big-apple/
I'm sending Mr. Hiskey a copy of this message. If at some point he wishes to revisit "The Big Apple," he
may contact me, and I'll be happy to be a resource person for him.

As a start, btw, "the big apple" was not (I repeat, not) a nickname for New York City in 1909. Instead, it meant roughly "(overweening) big shot" in the passage in question and only happened to refer to NYC.  It's is as if I referred to Washington DC as "the big enchilada in a discussion of political power. But if I then went to the train station and asked for a ticket to "The Big Enchilada",  the ticket-seller would have no idea where I wanted to go. See pp. 59ff.  of the Cohen/Popik 2011 "Big Apple" monograph.

Gerald Cohen

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