Aside from a couple of kids posted up outside Real Sports in big sweaters with owls on them, no one really refers to Toronto as ‘The 6ix’.
‘The 6ix’, of course, is a term for the city made famous by Toronto’s official mascot, Drake, who, if it were up to him, would have the entire GTA renamed Draketown and national anthem titled ‘OVO Canada’.
A recent poll by Forum Research asked residents of the Centre of the Universe about the name they most use to refer to their city. Turns out the answer is a very modest ‘Toronto’.
The poll found that three-quarters of Torontonians simply refer to Toronto by its official, Iroquois name. Just seven percent call it ‘The 6ix, with Etobicoke being an especially hot spot for Drake’s designation (nine per cent). No one in East York, meanwhile, seems to have an Instagram account or been to a Raptors game (here, 0 per cent of residents call Toronto ‘The 6ix’).
The second-most used term for Toronto is the nostalgic abbreviation T.O., while eight per cent identified it by some other name like Hollywood North or New York Lite. And who could forget T-Dot, popularized by local rapper Kardinal Offishall in his iconic track Bakardi Slang. Apparently everyone, because no one says it.
The poll also revealed that most people pronounce the second ‘T’ in Toronto, a clear an indication as any that no one’s really from Toronto. A quarter of people – those who were around when California Sandwiches only had one location and still had Stanley cups to care about instead of petty consonants – say it ‘Tronnah’.
What are you calling it these days? Let us know on our Facebook page.
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