what is the meaning of the word gotham
Gotham City "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,[13] 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.[14][15] The village's name derives from Old English gāt 'goat' and hām 'home', literally "homestead where goats are kept",[16] 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".[17] 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,[18] like the word Goth.