What’s In a Name?

Hot dogs are also known as franks, weenies, red hots, frankfurters, and wieners.  It’s said the term hot dog was used as an exclamation “Hot Dog” on the banners above the vendors at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Another explanation credits the name to a turn-of-the-century sports cartoonist T. A. Dorgan, who often used talking sausages in his drawings.  He implied that sleazy sausages were made with unsavory ingredients like dog meat.  Whether this is where the name “hot dog” came from or not, the implication that frankfurters were made using poodles and dachshunds becomes so prevalent that the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce banned the use of the term in 1913 by any of the vendors in the vicinity of Coney Island boardwalk, where hot dogs were officially called “Coney Island hot.”