Name-a-Day Calendar, August 5: Southern Illinois Salukis
Page 272 of 365
Chosen in: 1951
Chosen by: Cross country / track and field coach Leland “Doc” Lingle via student body vote
Are you familiar with Little Egypt?
In case you’re not, it’s a colloquial nickname for Southern Illinois (the region, not the school), which is either everything south of St. Louis or everything south of I-70, depending on who you ask. This nickname (probably) originated because early white settlers of the region happened upon the Cahokia Mounds in what is now suburban St. Louis and likened the structures to the Great Pyramids of Giza.1 The nickname began to skyrocket in popular usage following the 1818 municipal charter of the land at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers; this municipality was named “Cairo”, which—despite being pronounced differently2—is a nod to the Egyptian capital.
Southern Illinois Normal University was established in Carbondale in 1869, its first sports teams beginning play in 1913, nicknamed the Maroons after the school’s primary color.
In 1947, the school simplified its name to Southern Illinois University. Around the same time, students and fans began to want a less abstract nickname than that based on a color. For this reason, the school began to solicit mascot suggestions in 1951. This was also in part spurred by Leland “Doc” Lingle, who coached cross country and track and field. He’d recently received an almanac from his daughter as a Christmas gift. Out of curiosity, he turned to the page for “maroon” and saw that the word was sometimes used as a racial slur. He immediately knew Southern Illinois needed a new nickname.
A first vote on March 5, 1951, saw no true consensus on what to call Southern Illinois’ sports teams, so the school decided to solicit more suggestions and hold a second vote two weeks later.
In the interim, Lingle and a few other faculty members got to digging and they unearthed a mascot they thought would be a winner: the Saluki. The Saluki, sometimes called the “royal dog of Egypt”, is the oldest domesticated dog breed on Earth. According to the Southern Illinoisan, a local daily newspaper, “Salukis are carved on Egyptian tombs of 4,000 years ago and mummified bodies have been found in graves”. Given the region’s now-ubiquitous “Little Egypt” nickname, a unique Egyptian mascot seemed apt.
“Salukis” was one of the nicknames featured in the second student body vote on March 19, 1951, a vote it overwhelmingly won.3 Southern Illinois’ teams have been the Salukis ever since.
Today, Southern Illinois has a costumed Saluki mascot. He can run circles around the Jayhawk.
Previous page: Southeastern (Louisiana) Lions
Next page: Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles
Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!
This is debated. Some think the nickname comes from a bad winter in the 1830s causing a dearth of food similar to the Biblical Egyptian famine, but many think that this legend was attributed ex post facto.
KAIR-oh, or sometimes KAY-roh
Results: “Salukis” 536; “Rebels” 144; “Flyers”, “Knights”, “Marauders”, “Maroons” also ran