Big Apple
Although the history of "Big Apple " was once thought a mystery, a clearer picture of the term's history has emerged due to the work of amateur etymologist Barry Popik, and Gerald Cohen of Missouri University of Science and Technology. A number of false theories had previously existed, including a claim that the term derived from a woman named Eve who ran a brothel in the city. This was subsequently exposed as a hoax.
New York metropolitan area
The geographical, cultural, and economic center of the metropolitan area is New York City, which consists of five boroughs, each of which is also a county of New York State. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated population of 8,550,405 in 2015 (8,491,079 in 2014), distributed over a land area of just , New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. A global power city, New York City exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment, its fast pace defining the term "New York minute". Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world.