What do Mexicans call Mexico City?

Factual Questions
1

I assume it’s properly Ciudad de Mexico, which seems rather unwieldy. Well, so is Washington D.C., which is why we call it Washington or DC unless we need to distinguish from the state or perhaps if we’re speaking formally. Is it the same with our neighbor to the south? How do people distinguish between Mexico-the-city and Mexico-the-country?

Also, are there a variety of terms one might use depending on context? For example, I might make a reference to “the beltway” assuming everybody will know I’m talking about political insiders and not, say, people in Atlanta who live inside 285. Do they have that also?

2

“El DF” (for Distrito Federal), or just “México” and in context it’s understood to refer to the city.

There’s also Mexico State which partially surrounds Mexico City but is a separate state entity, and in neighboring areas it’s simply referred to as “the State”.

3

It’s also commonly referred to as “La Capital.”

4

Is there a grammatical difference in the way the city and the country or state is referred to, which assists in context?

For example, in Canada we have the city of Québec, which is the capital of the Province of Québec. When speaking in French, there are grammatical differences which immediately give the context.

For instance, if I say: “Je vais aller au Québec” that means I’m going to the province, because the province is referred to with a preposition + definite article.

But if I say: “Je vais aller à Québec”, that means I’m going to the city, since the city just takes a preposition.

I just wondered if Spanish, being another Romance language, has similar rules.

(English doesn’t make this distinction, of course, so we tend to use “Quebec” for the Province and “Quebec City” for the city, if the meaning isn’t otherwise clear from the context.)

5

It’s been awhile, but that’s what I remember from my times there.

6

There’s no grammatical mechanism to specify “Mexico” as city, state or country.

When referring to Mexico City, just Mexico or the moniker DF/capital is used. “Mexico City” is used locally like “New York City” or “State of Illinois”, i.e., as the official or ceremonial name.

When referring to Mexico State, the full name, “the State” or the abbreviation Edomex is used.

When referring to Mexico as a country and it needs to be distinguished from the city, it’s referred to as the Republic, the Nation, the Federation, etc.

7

DF is what I always hear.

8

DF, which in Spanish is pronounced “day effay”.

9

Just to add to Northern Piper’s post, this can not be done in other cases.

If I’m going to the city of New York, I’ll say “Je m’en vais à New York”.

But if I’m going to the State of New York, I can’t say “Je m’en vais au New York”. I will rather say “Je m’en vais dans l’État de New York”.

10

I’ll think about this question while I’m traveling from New York to Washington.