A few days ago Mr. Stewart mentioned that some food items were renamed during WWI. I found a bunch more stuff that was also renamed due to Anti-German sentiment. You'll probably never need to know any of this, but some people might find it interesting.
Sauerkraut - Liberty Cabbage or Victory Cabbage
Hamburger - Liberty Sausage, Liberty Steak, Liberty Sandwiches, or Salisbury Steak
Frankfurter - Hot Dogs, Liberty Sausage (The word "Hot Dog" was already in use, but WWI popularized it)
German Shepherd - Alsatian
Germania Club - Lincoln Club
Bismarck Hotel - Hotel Randolph
Dachshunds - Liberty Hounds (in the UK)
German Measles - Liberty Measles
Pretzels were removed from saloons
Berlin Avenue - Pershing
Bismark Street - Fourth Street
Kaiser Street - Gresham (these streets are in St. Louis)
Luxembourg, Missouri - Lemay, Missouri
Renaming stuff for political reasons is not exclusive to WWI. In 2003, when France didn’t support the U.S.’s plans to invade Iraq, Congressional Cafeterias renamed French Fries to be Freedom Fries and French Toast to be Freedom Toast.
Sources:
Hey Daniel, Did other countries rename their food in times of war? Were the street names changed back after the war or did the people just forget about them?
ReplyDeleteI like how WW1 popularized the word Hot Dog.
In response to your question, I found that Germany, Japan, and Greece all changed certain words during times of war. For example, Germany renamed Gibson Girl, a popular brand of English cigarettes, into "Manoli Wimpel" during WWII. Japan changed American baseball terms into homespun Japanese terms (eg homebase became "ichi ryu"). And some even claim that during the Turkish-Greece conflict, Greece renamed Turkish coffee into "Greek coffee." All of these linguistic changes reflect how countries viewed words that they had borrowed from other countries as "foreign" again. They believed that it was necessary to alienate them from the home language in order to indicate hostility towards the offending country. Hope this answers your question!
DeleteHere's where I got this information:
http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/MED-Magazine/May2003/07-languages-at-war.htm
This is a really fun and interesting post! It's extremely intriguing to see the lengths to which nations go to distance themselves from their enemies in times of war. It makes me think about how valuable it is to nations at war to cultivate this feeling of "us vs. them" in the people. This is also done through propaganda, such as the posters advertising that men should "Destroy this mad brute".
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting how many of the renamed foods included "liberty". The idea that the U.S. was fighting in order to "make the world safe for democracy" is highlighted both in the propaganda and even in the renaming of foods. It's funny how the government directed every part of society towards the direction of support for the war, even in the kitchen.
ReplyDelete