New Yorkers have a tendency to abbreviate the names of sections of the city. The oldest abbreviated district is SoHo, which appears to have entered common speech in the late 1960s. A New Yorker Talk of the Town item from the summer of 1970 quotes an author living in a factory loft on Spring Street “in the section of town—bounded north and south by Houston and Canal Streets and east and west by Broadway and West Broadway—that is called the Factory District, or, alternatively, the Cast-Iron District, or, alternatively, SoHo.” The fellow is none too pleased over his part of town’s newfound popularity and commoditization. In particular, the name game galls him.

I live in the Factory District. I dislike the name SoHo, and I dislike the person who thought up the name, though I don’t know him. He must have been very pleased with himself when he thought the name up. The Factory District is south of Houston Street. Get it? South Houston. I bet he wrote a letter to the Village Voice when he thought it up.

But SoHo was only the beginning, followed necessarily at the close of the ’70s by NoHo (north of Houston). In the early ’80s, there was Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street) while the name-of-the-’90s was the dopey Dumbo (the District Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

These abbreviations are about exclusivity and real estate, of course. Former industrial spaces become luxury lofts that draw artists, actors and models, then lawyers and investment bankers. Boutiques, clubs, bars, restaurants and art galleries pop up. Rents skyrocket.

New abbreviations are constantly in the works, striving to someday evolve to SoHo popularity. I was told this weekend with apparent seriousness that WeHa (West Harlem) and SpaHa (Spanish Harlem) are two nascent names making the rounds. It got me thinking that my neighborhood of Inwood could use an abbreviation upgrade to make gentrification more buzzworthy, something stupid like NoWaHi (North of Washington Heights) or SoBro (just South of the Bronx).