Name-a-Day Calendar, August 26: Texas Longhorns
Page 293 of 365
Chosen in: c. 1900 unofficially; some time in the late 1900s or early 1910s officially
Chosen by: It’s hard to give full credit to anyone in particular
The University of Texas was established in 1881 and began playing football in 1893, first known simply as the Varsity.
Around the turn of the 20th century, various newspapers throughout Texas began referring to Texas’ team as the Steers or the “Long Horns”. It is unclear who exactly was the first to apply these nicknames, but their etymological origin is clear: they came as a result of the burgeoning cattle industry responsible for a lot of Texas’ early development.
In 1903, D. A. Frank, a writer for student newspaper The Texan,1 referred to the team as the “Longhorns”, which appears to be the first confirmed time the modern one-word version of this moniker appeared in print. Alex Weisburg, the paper’s editor-in-chief, then ordered that all of the paper’s references to Texas sports teams be as the Longhorns. His staff followed this order, but it wasn’t quite enough to make the nickname official. How exactly that happened appears to be the subject of some debate.
Some sources claim that popular usage of the nickname led to its official adoption in 1906 or 1907. Others claim that initial attempts to officialize the nickname failed and that it wasn’t until 1913 that students voted to become the Longhorns; this followed a gift to the football team from university benefactor H. J. Lutcher Stark of several blankets with the words “Texas Longhorns” surrounding a sketch of the head and upper body of a longhorn.
Regardless of when the nickname became official, it was definitely in common use by the mid-1900s. The rest is just semantics.
Texas’ mascots are among the most instantly recognizable in North America. Their costumed longhorn, introduced in 1977, is named Hook ‘Em. Their live longhorn, introduced in 1916, is named Bevo.
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This newspaper became The Daily Texan in 1913 and still operates under that title today.