Name-a-Day Calendar, February 11: Georgetown Hoyas
Page 97 of 365
Chosen in: The late 1920s or early 1930s
Chosen by: It’s complicated
What is a Hoya? Yes, yes it is.
Georgetown University is ancient, having been founded in 1789, and in its earlier days, the curriculum required training in classical linguistics, including Greek and Latin. A little later, intercollegiate sports entered the picture. In 1870, the school formed a baseball team and named it the Stonewalls on account of the stone walls that adorn the campus. A football team would come four years later but it didn’t share the “Stonewalls” nickname.
Naturally, students began concocting chants and cheers for their hometown squads. The one that gained the most traction played on the students’ required linguistic training. “Hoya” is an Ancient Greek word that translates to “what” and “Saxa” is Latin for “rocks”. These two words combined birthed the chant “Hoya Saxa!”, which literally translates to “what rocks!” (as in “wow, such rocks!”). The first print reference to the Hoya Saxa chant came in The Washington Post in 1894, but it likely debuted earlier and it’s not entirely certain when it was created or who created it.
The word “Hoya” eventually bled into other aspects of student life. In 1920, the student newspaper then known as The Hilltopper asked college dean Rev. W. Coleman Nevils if they could rebrand as The Hoya. Coincidentally, Rev. Nevils had taken a liking to the term before joining the Georgetown faculty. During his previous stop at the College of the Holy Cross, he’d tried and failed to get their newspaper to change their name to The Hoia (another transliteration of “Hoya”). Obviously, he said yes.
In covering Georgetown’s sports teams, which were mostly known as the Hilltoppers at this time, local sportswriters sometimes relied on accounts from The Hoya to fill in gaps in information. This, combined with the ubiquity of the Hoya Saxa chant, led to some writers eventually just calling the teams the Hoyas. This grew in popularity over the late 1920s, with The Washington Post adopting the practice in 1929. Rev. Nevils had since become president of the university and supported this development wholeheartedly. Within a few years, the “Hoyas” nickname had become all but official.
So what is a Hoya. But also…what is a Hoya? Like, how do you make a mascot out of the word “what”? You could try to get creative with it and come up with something no other university has even thought to try. Or…or…you could just use a bulldog. Bulldogs are never a bad idea.
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