I'm more interested in why it never caught on regionally. There would rarely ever be any confusion, nobody in the states would think you were talking about York England. But it still never caught on for whatever reason.
When feasible, spoken English favours double syllable combinations. Three is too many, one is too few for disambiguation in a lossy environment. Hence Jersey, LA, San Fran, Philly, but not York. It’s not a hard rule, of course.
Or if you're upstate and going to one of the boroughs, you'll generally refer to it by name. "I'm going to Brooklyn / Queens / the Bronx", not "I'm going to the city" or "I'm going to New York City".
