Theory 1. Usually we associate the hot dog with baseball and American culture. However, the homeland of this dish is not the States, but rather, Germany. It’s believed that a German butcher invented hot dog sausages in the late 1600s.

The sausages resembled a dachshund in shape, so they were called Dachshundwurst (“sausage-dachshund” in German). German immigrants brought this sausage to the United States, where the word Dachshundwurst was too difficult for people to pronounce. This is when the catchy name, “hot dog” first appeared.

Theory 2. The word was allegedly coined in 1901 on a cold April day during a polo game. Vendors were serving sausage buns and shouting, “They’re hot! Get the dachshund sausages while they’re hot!”

New York Journal cartoonist Ted Dorgan witnessed this scene and drew a cartoon of barking dachshunds. Not knowing how to write “dachshund,” he simply wrote “hot dog.” However, historians couldn’t find this cartoon, and this theory was found to be erroneous.

Theory 3. The term originated at Yale University in the 1890s. Students began to call the vans selling sausage buns “dog wagons.”

This theory is supported by the fact that a linguist and culinary historian discovered the first mention of a hot dog in an article published on October 19, 1895, in the campus magazine. The story featured people eating hot dogs.

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