NEW YORK—Standing on Houston Street recently, tourist Susanne Ydergaard pointed toward what she thought was SoHo. “It’s by the Hudson, right?” she said, a digital camera hanging from her wrist. Nearby NoHo was equally foreign, as were FiDi, SoHa and Welsea, said Ms. Ydergaard, 60 years old. “They’re easy to say,” but her home, she said, doesn’t feel the need to constantly rename itself. “In Denmark, we only do this with new areas,” she added. For years, some of the trendiest New York neighborhoods have earned nicknames that caught on with locals, such as SoHo, or South of Houston Street, Tribeca (the triangle below Canal Street) or more recently, Dumbo for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Out-of-towners caught on eventually if they visited enough times. But now, the latest shorthand is confusing New Yorkers and tourists alike, a mishmash brought about by wishful thinking among neighborhood boosters, real-estate agents and brokers. “These things are spreading like kudzu,” said Andrea Saturno-Sanjana, a real-estate agent with Citi Habitats.

Real estate drives much of the name game. The latest new acronym: PLG, which stands for Prospect Lefferts Gardens. “It rolls off the tongue,” said Sarah Burke, regional Brooklyn director at real-estate firm Douglas Elliman. “Even agents, when they call, they say, ‘Do you have anything from PLG?’ ” PLG joins other proposed names for New York neighborhoods including “Hellsea” (Hell’s Kitchen for people who wish they lived in the Chelsea neighborhood), “Welsea” (West Chelsea) and “Rambo” (Right Around the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Property For Sale In Goa SiolimOther neighborhood nicknames seem to be intended as rebranding efforts for existing areas, including “WiNo” or Williamsburg North. Orange Sable Pomeranian Puppies For Sale In TexasAnd it’s not just New York City. Maltese Terrier Pups For Sale Glasgow

“The cute abbreviation names were a New York fad, but people got into it, simply because SoHo bloomed so large in people’s consciousness,” said Philip Kasinitz, a sociology professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. The trend is more prevalent in urban areas, where residents, real-estate agents and developers redraw areas with smaller boundaries, therefore needing new names. In Chicago, the moniker NoCa, for North of Chicago Avenue, has been derided by the Chicago Tribune as “way too New York” and “like the brand name of a diet soda.” Washington, D.C., has NoMa, or North of Massachusetts Avenue, while in West Palm Beach, Fla., an area south of Southern Boulevard has been dubbed SoSo. , some newer names in New York have clearly made it: For example, the acronym FiDi, for the Financial District, was used in listings 167 times, and Dumbo was used 1,152 times last year. Forget Vegas, Weddings in Denmark Take the Cake In Thailand, Blinged-Out Dolls Bring Good Luck British Beavers Make Comeback, Face Love and Hostility

SoBro, for the South Bronx, hasn’t caught on to the same degree, nor have SpaHa (Spanish Harlem), Welsea or WiNo. BoCoCa, which stands for the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, showed up only 15 times last year, but it appears to be slowly staking a claim. The neighborhood currently boasts a business called Bococa Dental and a handful of BoCoCa parent groups. As for PLG, Prospect Lefferts Gardens was created in the ’60s, but has only within the last decade seen new development and wealthier residents. The name comes from nearby locations Prospect Park, Lefferts Manor and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Longtime residents weren’t so sure, though, that Prospect Lefferts Gardens even exists, much less PLG. “I just consider it Flatbush, and you’re right next to Crown Heights,” said lifetime resident Papaya Edwards, 41, who lives, technically, in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and does custodial work. Down the street, Jaub Brooks, 30, was incredulous that he, too, could be standing in PLG.

“I guess that’s an alias for Crown Heights,” said Mr. Brooks, a photographer. As for the acronym, he said, “it sounds a little fancier than it actually is, you know what I mean?” The city’s planning department produces a neighborhood map, with the disclaimer that the map is neither exhaustive nor official. The neighborhood names float within community districts, allowing the department to remain agnostic on where one neighborhood starts and another ends. “There are no boundaries associated with the neighborhoods,” said planning department spokeswoman Rachaele Raynoff. “Neighborhood names are as subjective and changeable as New York’s diverse population.” Perhaps the harshest critic of these monikers has been U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who, as a state assemblyman in 2011, introduced what he called the Neighborhood Integrity Act. “It’s a Wild West that currently exists right now,” said Mr. Jeffries, who professes a particular disdain for ProCro, the gentrifying border of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.

“It seems reasonable to establish some process through which community residents are actually involved in establishing neighborhood identities in law.” That doesn’t stop some from looking for more names. Witness the continuing development of Manhattan’s West Side—call it Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton, Midtown West or just MiMA, for Midtown Manhattan, as one building does. Similar abbreviations have found favor in San Francisco, where the area south of Market Street is called SoMa, the now-hot neighborhood North of the Panhandle has been dubbed NoPa, and Tendernob is used to describe an area between Nob Hill and the Tenderloin neighborhood. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, NOBE, which is pronounced with two syllables, stands for an area of North Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville that a neighborhood website says is “coveted by professionals, hipsters and families alike.” They may be silly-sounding, but nicknames are an indicator of consumer behavior. Neighborhoods, not buildings, are what sell real estate, said Susan Getz, a real-estate agent at Coldwell Banker in San Francisco.