Friday Fun
What's In A Name?
For this Friday Fun post, we’re asking—and answering!—William Shakespeare’s iconic question: “What’s in a name? That which we call [Theodore Roosevelt], By any other name would smell as sweet.”
As we all know, our twenty-sixth president had many names and nicknames during his lifetime—some flattering, others not so much. They range from the common “Teddy” to the obscure “Hurly Burly Ted.”
Although there are many ways we could approach a post looking at Roosevelt’s name, we have decided to examine how Americans wanted to remember Roosevelt at the end of his presidency and the nicknames they felt best encapsulated him.
But before we begin, we want to devote a few words on the proper pronunciation of Roosevelt’s last name.
How to Properly Pronounce Roosevelt
As is the case today, the proper pronunciation of “Roosevelt” was a much discussed topic during our twenty-sixth president’s time in office. In fact, Richard E. Mayne, chairman of the department on reading and speech culture in the New York State Teachers’ Association, discovered in 1903 “the name Roosevelt [was] subject to over 200 variations of pronunciation.” (How there are 200 we are not completely sure!)
Mayne wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Sun on May 2, 1903 that while the president pronounced his name as three syllables—“Rose-uh-velt”—the majority of people pronounced it with only two syllables. For this reason, Mayne questioned the president’s decision to “perpetuate a practice against which are set the principles of usage.”
President Roosevelt didn’t respond to Mayne, but his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, did. In Robert’s letter to the editor penned six days after Mayne’s, Roosevelt’s uncle wrote, “It is rather a dangerous proceeding to assume that a man does not know how to pronounce his own name . . .” (We agree!)
Then Robert gave a short history of the last name explaining that it was pronounced with three syllables in accordance with its Dutch origin. Finally, he provided how to pronounce the president’s last name correctly “[f]or readers of [the] paper who are justifiably anxious to know the proper pronunciation of the President’s name.”
According to Robert, “[T]he name is ‘Rose-(uh)-velt,’ in spite of whatever mistaken analogies misdirected chairmen may strive to find to the contrary.” But it wasn’t just Roosevelt’s uncle who defended the honor—and pronunciation—of the Roosevelt name.
In 1911, Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary gave the same pronunciation as Robert’s to a woman from Canada who inquired about the correct way to say the former president’s name—as well as if he had ever visited Canada. (He hadn’t at that point but would in 1917.)
Like Roosevelt’s uncle, his secretary emphasized the three-syllable division and the importance of “rose” as the first syllable: “In reply to your note to Mr. Roosevelt I beg to say that the way to pronounce Mr. Roosevelt’s name is by dividing it into three syllables and pronouncing it like the flower rose, and then ending it with a slightly accented e before the velt.”
What will Theodore Roosevelt’s Nickname Be in the History Books of the Future?
Although people may not have known how to pronounce the twenty-sixth president’s last name, they did love their pet nicknames for Roosevelt, something a newspaper capitalized on near the end of Roosevelt’s presidency.
A month before Roosevelt left office, the Baltimore Sun invited readers to suggest suitable nicknames or titles of honor for the outgoing president. The Sun believed Roosevelt would join the heroes of the past and needed a proper title to become a member of that pantheon.
“What will the Americans of the future call Mr. Roosevelt?” the newspaper asked in the February 7, 1909 article. “Plain Teddy is unsatisfactory, and besides it gives no indication of the character of the man . . . . [T]he Rough Rider somehow fails to reach the mark. The Father of the Panama Canal might be disputed by others, and Theodore the Great is a bit too ambitious.”
Fortunately for the Sun, the Americans of 1909 gladly weighed in—perhaps tempted by the two five-dollar prizes. The newspaper received nearly 5,000 nicknames and titles of honor in response to its survey, which it published in a February 28, 1909 spread.
Plain Teddy—the nickname the Sun called “unsatisfactory”—was the most popular choice as it remains today. Similarly, the other top choices—“The Big Stick,” “The Strenuous President,” and “The Trust Buster”—are all concepts well-connected to Roosevelt today.
But although many of the most popular nicknames of 1909 are still used today in some form or fashion, the over 750 novel nicknames the newspaper included largely aren’t.
We especially enjoyed the following ten novel nicknames (in alphabetical order): D’Artagnan Roosevelt, The Eighth Wonder of the World, King of all the Teddies, The Man Who Does Things, The Pulpit Pounder, Rah-Rah Roosevelt, His Strenuous Inefficiency, Tantrum Teddy, Teddy Tiddledywinks, and The Toothy.
But we think the newspaper could have done better picking out the prizewinning nicknames— “The Dreadnought” and “The Fizzle”—although we applaud the editors for selecting two names proposed by women.
In fact, women’s interest in a nickname contest for Theodore Roosevelt surprised the Sun: “It is curious to note that, despite the character of the contest and the large number of entries by men, both prizes were won by women.” We’re not shocked. Women proposing nicknames in 1909 speaks to Roosevelt’s immense popularity at the time and his ability to speak to women as well as to men.
On that note, we’ll conclude and invite you to peruse the list of 750+ names and find your favorites. While we aren’t offering a five-dollar prize like the Sun, we would love for you to drop your best nickname for Theodore Roosevelt in the comments. We believe our readers can do better than “Dreadnought” and “Fizzle.”
Theodore intensly disliked "Teddy" yet it was the favored name then and is still widely used today...but not by me!