<P> Writer Bill Finger, on the naming of the city and the reason for changing Batman's locale from New York City to a fictional city, said, "Originally I was going to call Gotham City' Civic City .' Then I tried' Capital City,' then' Coast City .' Then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name' Gotham Jewelers' and said,' That's it,' Gotham City . We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it ." </P> <P> "Gotham" was a nickname for New York City that became popular in the nineteenth century; Washington Irving had first attached it to New York in the November 11, 1807 edition of his Salmagundi, a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics . Irving took the name from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England, a place inhabited, according to folklore, by fools . The village's name derives from Old English gāt' goat' and hām' home', literally "homestead where goats are kept", and is pronounced / ˈɡoʊtəm / GOHT - əm, like the word goat (cf . Chatham, / ˈtʃætəm / CHAT - əm, a similar name where the letters th represent a "t" sound followed by a silent "h" rather than a "th" sound). The Joker references this etymology in Detective Comics #880, in which he tells Batman that the word means "a safe place for goats". In contrast, "Gotham" as used for New York has a different pronunciation by analogy to other words spelled with "th" and is pronounced as / ˈɡɒθəm / GOTH - əm, like the word Goth . </P> <P> Gotham City, like other cities in the DC Universe, has varied in its portrayals over the decades, but the city's location is traditionally depicted as being in the state of New Jersey . In Amazing World of DC Comics #14 (March 1977), publisher Mark Gruenwald discusses the history of the Justice League and indicates that Gotham City is located in the state of New Jersey . </P> <P> In the World's Greatest Super Heroes (August 1978) comic strip, a map is shown placing Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware . World's Finest Comics #259 (November 1979) also confirms that Gotham is in New Jersey . New Adventures of Superboy #22 (October 1981) and the 1990 Atlas of the DC Universe both show maps of Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware . </P>

Where is gotham city supposed to be in batman