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City of no brother.ly love

Is the nickname "City of Brotherly Love" a violation?

It's caused a minor stir in local media circles, but since the odds are that you aren't in local media circles, you may not be aware of the new rival news website now in the works for Philadelphia. It's run by some of the sharper minds in online news, including Jim Brady, who helped get the Washington Post's website off the ground back in the day when newspapers needed someone to get their websites off the ground. And -- like the singing bird and the croaking toad -- it had a name:

Brother.ly.

People do get pretty persnickety  -- for want of a better term -- about what to call their hometown. No one ever says, "Yo! I'm off to the City of Brotherly Love to catch the Flyers." Indeed, people seem pretty torn over whether "Philly" -- the name of our website! -- is acceptable. I hated it when I moved here a quarter-century ago, later adopted it, and then took some flack from readers (that's a first , right?) for using it.

In his sort-of mea culpa, Brady correctly notes that only a tourist would ever call New York "the Big Apple." Don't use the word "Frisco" in front of a real San Franciscan unless you want to get cold-cocked (and they're right -- even writing that word gives me the creeps). So Brady & Co. went the other direction -- to use a phrase that ONLY Philadelphians know and use.

BillyPenn.com. I guess they'll put a massive Flyers jersey around the website for the Stanley Cup playoffs?

I hear the "attytood.com" domain was taken.