what is the meaning of the word gotham
Gotham City "Gotham" was a nickname for New York City that became popular in the nineteenth century; Washington Irving had first attached it to New York in the November 11, 1807 edition of his Salmagundi,[13] a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics. Irving took the name from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England, a place inhabited, according to folklore, by fools.[14][15] The village's name derives from Old English gāt 'goat' and hām 'home', literally "homestead where goats are kept",[16] and is pronounced /ˈɡoʊtəm/ GOHT-əm, like the word goat (cf. Chatham, /ˈtʃætəm/ CHAT-əm, a similar name where the letters th represent a "t" sound followed by a silent "h" rather than a "th" sound). The Joker references this etymology in Detective Comics #880, in which he tells Batman that the word means "a safe place for goats".[17] In contrast, "Gotham" as used for New York has a different pronunciation by analogy to other words spelled with "th" and is pronounced as /ˈɡɒθəm/ GOTH-əm,[18] like the word Goth.
Joe Chill In Batman's origin story, Joe Chill is the Gotham City mugger who murders young Bruce Wayne's parents, Dr. Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne. The murder traumatizes Bruce, and he swears to avenge their deaths by fighting crime as the vigilante Batman.[1]