Brooklyn

Named for wartime blackouts ordered to hide the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Ebinger's, a Brooklyn bakery chain, sold the cake during the Second World War, when the borough darkened its windows so the Navy Yard could not be spotted from the sea. The chain closed in 1972 without releasing its recipe, so every version since has been a reconstruction.

One haircut, several city names, depending on which barber you ask.

The cut is the same one usually called a taper fade, in which the hair shortens gradually toward the neck and ears. Dictionaries credit its popularity to Brooklyn barbershops, which is the only account on record. Brooklyn's own name is Dutch, from Breukelen, a village near Utrecht.

The accent got a borough's name because that is where the movies said their tough guys came from.

The features people label Brooklynese are heard across New York City rather than in Brooklyn alone: r-dropping, the raised vowel of coffee, and the older oi for er that vaudeville and radio comics exaggerated into toity-toid. Brooklyn attracted the name because it supplied so many stock characters in films and comic strips. Linguists call the wider variety New York City English.