In the search for immortality, some of the most successful people have been those who have managed to live on through their names. Iconic talents and heroes lend their names to film genres, battlefields and schools of thought. Less talented people with lots of cash to spare lend their names to plaques and auditoriums. And then there are those who really aren't looking for fame or immortality at all but somehow make their way into the English dictionary.
Many common American names have been adopted as slang terms and phrases over the years, and some have even become accepted English nouns, verbs and adjectives. To jack is to steal, to joan is to insult, to jones is to crave. The list goes on.
But who are these people whose names we say all the time? Do these men and women even really exist?
Well, the lucky Joshes of the world actually owe the phrase "just joshin'" to a real namesake of theirs, famous for joking around, according to the most popular, albeit contested, etymology. While I hear the biblical Joshua was quite a funny guy, the word actually takes its meaning from the pseudonymous humorist Josh Billings (née Henry Wheeler Shaw) of the 19th century.
Another theory suggests that the Josh of josh is actually Josh Tatum, a Bostonian who, in 1883, figured out that nickels were around the same size as five-dollar gold pieces. He plated all of his nickels with gold to make the most of his money and was never successfully busted.
Random House disagrees with both of these stories, though, and posits instead that the phrase comes from a 19th century slang word "josh," meaning hick. Really, then, the Joshes were the victims of the jokes, not the jokers themselves. Just joshin'! No, but really.
As for the Joes, they don't seem to owe their name's popularity to any one real person in particular. In fact, the phrase "a cuppa joe" doesn't have any recorded, agreed upon, single etymology, but two relatively prevalent theories do exist.
The first suggests that "cuppa joe" is taken from the song "Old Black Joe" by Stephen Collins Foster, a famous musician, and that the black in his song's title was associated with coffee's color.
I agree. It's a bit of a stretch.
The second theory, based on the fact that the usage of the word "joe" as coffee was particularly common among Navy communities, argues that the word joe refers to an actual Joe — Josephus "Joe" Daniels, the WWI Secretary of the Navy who banned alcoholic beverages from Navy ships, thus popularizing coffee instead.
Or maybe it was simply derived from the words Java and Jamoke (Java+Mocha), if you
The one I'm never sure about in terms of winning the immortality game is John, whoever he may be. The most common suggestion is that the word john, used to mean toilet, refers to Sir John Harrington, creator of the first modern toilet in the 1500s.
Of course, he has a buddy to share his ill fate with: Thomas Crapper, who is famous for significant contributions to shocker — the modern toilet as well.
Don't get me wrong, toilets are extremely useful, and I'm extremely thankful for both Harrington and Crapper's dirty work. I think I'd just still be more satisfied living on as a synonym for coffee than as a synonym for the can. Just joshin'! No, but really.
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Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu
