toronto nickname

People seem to have a lot of nicknames for Toronto and they're so spot on

Whether it's a monicker gifted from the celeb who some say put Toronto on the map, a decades-old title passed down from older generations or an allusion to one of the city's many quirks, T.O. has a ton of nicknames, though most of them may only make sense to those who actually live here.

A quick poll by blogTO on Twitter shows that residents' own epithets for their home city are often hilarious, always accurate and sometimes negative, though hopefully in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

Some readers chimed in with the classics: Hogtown, The Big Smoke, Queen City, TDot, and in more recent years, the 6ix. Then there's the metropolis's original Indigenous name, Tkaronto, which many said they would prefer as our official title if they could rename it.

Next is the ever-popular "Tarana" or "Toronno," a reference to how city-dwellers pronounce the word. It's even been put on patches and shirts. (One can always tell if someone is from out-of-town if they pronounce the second "t.")

Also apparently popular are references to our frigid winters, our at times very sub-par road conditions, and large population of resident raccoons, which are the city's official mascot, of course — if you haven't had some type of wild raccoon run-in, are you even from Toronto?

The hub is also known to some as the Screwface Capital, an old nod to how poorly homegrown musicians feel they're treated by the industry here.

Then, of course, are the mentions of how Toronto has been overrun by new condo developments in recent years, how bonkers our real estate market is and how unfortunately expensive it is in general to live here.

Center of the Universe and Downtown Canada were also popular responses, the latter, of course, referring to one very viral 2020 tweet saying that "Downtown Canada wanna be Times Square so bad," Downtown Canada in this case meaning Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto.

The post got so much traction — 5,000 likes, 2,500 quote tweets, hundreds of retweets and its own Twitter trend — that the original poster at one point changed her name on the platform to "Ms. Downtown Canada."

Other notable mentions include ConstructionvilleManhattan North, the extremely charming PeePeePooPoo Land — yeah, remember that guy? — and, of course, simply home (aww).

Lead photo by

Suhail Akhtar


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