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You've probably heard one place or another that it's bad form to refer to the city of San Francisco by the name "Frisco".

The idea of "Frisco" being an improper name for San Francisco was more or less instigated by the late, famous San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, whose book of collected columns was titled Dont Call It Frisco. When asked about this in an interview, later on, he did take back this admonition.

The controversial nickname for San Francisco more or less resulted from the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, which was oft abbreviated as "the Frisco line". That railroad was merged with another line in 1980, with its old Oklahoma depot turned into a museum. (Mickey Newbury's famous song "Frisco Depot" refers to it, and reminds us that "Frisco" has always been a "mighty rich city", even half a century ago.)

There are those who claim that "Frisco" was an accepted name for the City in the early days, but it was actually always controversial. Even Emperor Norton, the famous San Francisco kook of the 19th century, hated it, and there was even a ladies' group in the reconstruction period following the 1906 earthquake dedicated to expunging the name.

Depending on who you hang out with, you may or may not have noticed that the nickname, like many other things "forbidden", is making a bit of a comeback. It could be that SMS and instant messaging, which require communications to be heavily abbreviated, may have something to do with this. There is also a tendency, in the rap and hip-hop culture, to abbreviate things. And the traditional abbreviations for San Francisco, while still not out of favor, can be problematic: "The City" is too vague, and "SF" means "Science Fiction", primarily. While the most frequently-used abbreviation is still "San Fran", don't be surprised if the old moniker starts popping up in convo...digital or otherwise.

This shop around Market and Powell has the Frisco "brand" covered.

One user of a question-and-answer site going by (assumed to be a Donna Summer fan, as s/he goes by the name "On The Radio Uh Oh") had this to say in response to another user querying about the propriety of calling San Francisco "Frisco":

Basically, it's considered gauche and undignified to call it "Frisco". I'm assuming this developed because "Frisco" was commonly used by Midwesterners... and since they were often viewed as uneducated and gauche by cosmopolitan big city standards, the word was also viewed as such.

However, with time, such tradition becomes dated, and thus seems non-progressive and closed-minded, and thus comes to be viewed as uneducated, gauche, and VERY petty itself. And that's what's happening to the word "Frisco". The older generations in the city tend to still cringe when they hear "Frisco", but the under 30 natives (who admittedly are a rare breed) generally don't have a problem with it. In fact, many embrace it... there are even t-shirts with "Frisco" printed, and those shirts have become the only acceptable San Francisco-specific shirt to wear by young natives.

So... if you're around people in their teens and 20s, you can generally say "Frisco" without anyone caring... they'll probably say it, too. I rarely say it, but I have no problem with others saying it... and yes, I'm a native. However, many people, particularly older people (the older a person is, the more likely they are to be offended by the word "Frisco"), don't really understand this, or how people can adopt the word outside of its former negativity, or that times and language change, and thus take offense.

Honestly, I hate it when people call it "The City". That seems far more degrading to me... there are several cities in the Bay Area..."

And in a world where everything's easily accessible and abridged, even in our daily lives in San Francisco, why should its name be any different?

... I've also long had this theory that "Frisco" was taboo because there's a city in Texas called "Frisco".

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