Wednesday, May 22, 2013

How Notre Dame got its nickname

From a blog post by Holy Cross history professor Edward O'Donnell:

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How on earth did a college with a French name in the rural Midwest, far from the big cities with large Irish populations, come to be known as “The Fighting Irish”?  The answer reveals a great deal about the struggle for ethnic and religious acceptance in United States history, for Notre Dame originally opposed the name due to its potentially negative connotations and only embraced it in 1927, long after it had emerged a national powerhouse in football. ...
By the mid-1920s, Notre Dame was by far the best-known Catholic university in the nation.  As a consequence, it was the first college football team with a truly national following as Catholics from Baltimore to Boise to Berkeley adopted the team as their own even if they never attended Notre Dame.  These fans, known as “subway alumni,” might root for Georgetown or Holy Cross as their local favorites, but they avidly read the details of Notre Dame’s exploits in the Sunday sports sections.  Irish Catholics especially identified with the David and Goliath quality of Notre Dame’s rise.  As a group, Irish Catholics had begun by the 1910s and 1920s to earn a measure of success and acceptance in a nation long hostile to Catholics.  As they did so, they took enormous pride in the ability of Notre Dame to knock off teams like Princeton and Army.
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A young Eamon de Valerra

During its rise to national prominence, Notre Dame had been called many names, including simply the “Catholics,” but also the “Horrible Hibernians” and a host of other undignified appellations.  The first known reference to the team as the “Fighting Irish” occurred in the Detroit Free Press in 1909, but the name failed to stick.  Other nicknames like “Gold and Blue” came and went, as did the “Warriors” and “Ramblers.”   But in 1919, perhaps inspired by a visit to Notre Dame by Eamon de Valerra, one of the key revolutionaries working to achieve Ireland’s independence, the name “Fighting Irish” returned as a favorite nickname among the school’s students.  

But it still lacked official sanction from school officials.  Understandably, Notre Dame President Fr. Matthew Walsh, C.S.C and other school officials were leery of the name.  It conjured up the longstanding stereotype that the Irish were prone to fighting and violence—the very stereotype Catholic colleges were committed to eradicating.

Yet there was something attractive about the name in a society that worshiped competitiveness and a fighting spirit. Perhaps, if properly presented, the name might make the American public think of the great contributions made by the Irish Brigade in recent wars, rather than the many riots of the nineteenth century in which Irish immigrants played a prominent role.