Why Is New Orleans Called the Big Easy? Locals Explain

Why is New Orleans called the Big Easy? The short answer is that nobody knows exactly who said it first. The phrase drifted around for most of the 20th century, showing up on a Gretna dance hall, in a small-town Louisiana newspaper column, in a prison newsmagazine and in a 1970 crime novel, before a 1987 movie made it famous everywhere. The longer answer is better, and it ends with a confession: almost nobody who lives here uses it.

We've told people not to say it before. That felt a little unfair without showing our work, so here it is.

It Started as the Name of a Dance Hall

The earliest "Big Easy" that word researchers have found wasn't a nickname for the city at all. It was a Black dance hall in Gretna, across the river.

According to Barry Popik's research, the New Orleans Times-Democrat reported in August 1911 that the hall known as the Big Easy had burned down. It turns up again in Jazzmen, a 1939 history of the music, and the bassist Pops Foster later remembered playing the Big Easy Hall in his autobiography. So the phrase was tied to music and dancing before it was ever tied to the whole city. That part, at least, feels right.

Then the Columnists and the Convicts Picked It Up

The next stretch of the story is stranger. Popik found that a columnist named Bob Lefkowitz used "Big Easy" for New Orleans around 30 times in the Franklin Banner-Tribune starting in 1952, without ever explaining it. A few years later it shows up in The Angolite, the newsmagazine published inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary. A September 1957 issue states plainly that "the only city they call Big Easy is New Orleans." Popik credits the researchers Fred Shapiro and Ben Zimmer with digging those up in 2022.

Which means, as far as anybody can tell, the nickname spent some of its early life being passed around by people who were very much not on vacation.

Betty Guillaud Made It Stick

Locally, the person who usually gets credit for popularizing the phrase is Betty Guillaud, who wrote a gossip column for the States-Item and later the Times-Picayune. When New Orleans Magazine asked her about it, she tied the timing to when people started calling New York "the Big Apple." Exactly when she started is a matter of some debate. The magazine places her in the late 1960s and '70s; Popik found her first use in a 1980 column. Either way, her readers saw it a lot.

The Novel and the Movie

In 1970, a Times-Picayune police reporter named James Conaway published a crime novel called The Big Easy. He told New Orleans Magazine that he picked up the phrase from two men he overheard on his way to the courthouse. For years the book was assumed to be the first time the nickname appeared in print. The prison newsmagazine beat it by more than a decade.

Then came the movie. The Big Easy, directed by Jim McBride and starring Dennis Quaid, is usually dated 1986 and hit American theaters in 1987. Popik notes that Quaid himself suggested the title, and that the film has nothing to do with Conaway's book. It also has some of the most famous accent crimes in movie history, which we've already written about. After that, the phrase belonged to the travel industry.

So Why Doesn't Anybody Here Say It?

This part is opinion, but it's a widely held one.

For starters, it sounds like marketing, because for the last few decades it mostly has been. You see it on hotel packages and on the kind of T-shirts that inspired Dirty Coast in the first place. We started this company as a reaction to those Bourbon Street shirts, and "Big Easy" printed in a party font is pretty much the tourist trap uniform.

The bigger reason is that it doesn't describe the place. Living here is a lot of things. Easy isn't one of them. We have heat that would melt a lesser city, streets that eat tires (we made a whole shirt, Unknown Potholes, as a riff on Joy Division about it), cockroaches that fly and a hurricane season that lasts half the year. The musicians who make this place sound the way it does work harder than almost anybody. Calling all of that "easy" shortchanges the people who keep it going.

And maybe a small, petty reason too. A nickname somebody else gives you never fits as well as one you pick yourself.

What We Say Instead

"New Orleans" works fine. So does "the city," which is what most locals actually say. "NOLA" is everywhere now, even if a few old-timers still wince at it. "The Crescent City," for the bend in the river, has been around much longer than "the Big Easy" and doesn't come with a movie attached. We've printed our own version of the abbreviation on NOLA X.

Our favorite answer might be the simplest one, though. When somebody from out of town asks why you love it here, you don't need a nickname. You just say I Like New Orleans Better and let them figure out the rest.

Why Is New Orleans Called the Big Easy: FAQ

Why is New Orleans called the Big Easy?

The phrase appears to have started as the name of a Gretna dance hall in the early 1900s, then showed up as a nickname for the city in Louisiana publications in the 1950s. A 1970 novel and a 1987 movie, both titled The Big Easy, made it famous nationwide.

Who came up with "the Big Easy"?

Nobody knows for sure. Columnist Betty Guillaud is often credited with popularizing it locally, and James Conaway's 1970 novel was long thought to be the first printed use. Researchers have since found earlier uses from the 1950s.

Do locals call New Orleans the Big Easy?

Almost never. Most locals just say "New Orleans" or "the city," and many see "the Big Easy" as a tourism slogan.