Were Hot Dogs Actually Named After A Dog?

Frank, weenie, coney, red hot — whatever you call it, hot dogs are delicious. The summer grilling staple can be dressed in an array of tasty toppings, such as onions, relish, chili, cheese, sauerkraut, bacon, and more.

According to History.com, the hot dog can be traced all the way back to ancient Rome. Legend has it that Roman emperor Nero's chef, Gaius, would starve his pigs one week before slaughtering them. One day, Gaius was brought a fully roasted, uncleaned pig. He then stuck a knife in the pig's belly to see if it was edible and accidentally popped out an empty intestine due to the pig's starvation.

Expanded from the heat, the chef mixed various meats with spices and wheat into the intestine, creating a sausage-like link and exclaiming, "I have discovered something of great importance!" Many people would agree with that statement; the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC) states that Americans consume about 20 billion hot dogs per year. But how did the hot dog receive its famous name?

After the hot dog was reportedly invented in Rome, it made its way across Europe to Germany, where it was perfected. Culture Trip says that this German staple food is claimed by cities including Frankfurt and Vienna, hence its nicknames frankfurter and frank. When German immigrants made their way to America in the 1800s, they brought with them their comforting recipes from home — one of them being the hot dog. 

While the hot dog wasn't named after one dog in particular, it's safe to say that somewhere throughout history, the adorable German-bred pooch helped coin the name thanks to their resemblance in shape. It's said that the first hot dogs were sold by a German immigrant from a food cart in New York in the 1860s. At that time, their name wasn't "hot dog" but "dachshund (little dog) sausages."

Vendors would sell this street food shouting, "They're red hot! Get your dachshund sausage while they're red-hot," according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. This led New York Times sports cartoonist Tad Dorgon to draw an image of a barking dachshund sausage on a roll famously titled "hot dog" (supposedly because he didn't know how to spell "dachshund").

By 1871, German immigrant Charles Feltman opened the first famous hot dog stand at an amusement park in Brooklyn, New York. Yep, you guessed it: Coney Island. In that year, he sold more than 3,600 hot dogs on a bun. Little did he know his former Polish employee, Nathan Handwerker, would later become his competition by opening a hot dog stand with Nathan's Famous hot dogs. Since 1916, Nathan's Famous has sponsored a hot dog eating contest every Fourth of July at Coney Island, with the world record as of 2020 being 76 hot dogs eaten in 10 minutes, according to Britannica.

But how did the hot dog get paired with its soulmate, the hot dog bun? NPR says that the story comes from St. Louis in the 1880s, where a street vendor sold hot dogs with a pair of white gloves to go with them so people wouldn't burn their hands or get grease on them. Unfortunately, the vendor found himself losing money because people were running off with his gloves. The solution? A soft roll, as suggested by his brother-in-law, who was a baker.

Fast-forward to today, and hot dogs on a hot dog bun continue to be an affordable, easy-to-eat street food served at picnics and baseball games. From its name to its rise in popularity, this food will surely live on for another millennium.