Antedating of "Junior High School"

[Baker, John]

Various antedatings of this are available via Access Newspaper Archive, of which the earliest clear case seems to be the following from the Marysville (Ohio) Tribune, 6/1/1887:  "The Junior High School, of Urbana, picnicked here last Friday."
 
Potentially earlier but ambiguous is this example from the Piqua (Ohio) Morning Call, 3/22/1884:  "J. Parker Widney a member of the Junior High School class took his gun and bagged a wild goose before breakfast on Thursday morning."  This probably just refers to a class at the high school, but the capitalization leaves me with some uncertainty.
 
 
John Baker
 
 
 
 

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From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Shapiro, Fred
Sent: Sun 1/10/2010 8:38 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Antedating of "Junior High School"



JSTOR has a 1907 occurrence of _junior high school_, in The School Review, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Jun., 1907), p.447.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 10:27 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Junior High

The earliest quote in the OED (as of 1989) is
1909 Ann. Rep. Bd. Educ. (Columbus, Ohio) 168 The Board has declared itself in favour of the *Junior High School System.

So the "system" was in existence (at least as a proposal) somewhere before the Columbus, Ohio, Board decided to adopt it.  We all know how slow Boards of Education are in adopting new and better ideas.  And just how quickly could something become a fad (in 1909)?

YEAR  NUMBER TOTAL (I should really count only males, but ...)
             BORN      BORN
1908 -- 38 Juniors, 1843006 records, .0021 %
1907 -- 40 Juniors, 1800103 records, .0022 %
1906 -- 38 Juniors.
1905 -- 33 Juniors, 1684770 records, .0020 %
1904 -- 25 Juniors.
1903 -- 24 Juniors.
1902 -- 38 Juniors. 1511799 records, .0025 %
1901 -- 26 Juniors.
1900 -- 20 Juniors, 1426212 records, .0014 %
...
1895 -- 12 Juniors, 1168736 records, .0010 %

I vote for 1902!  :-)
Joel


At 1/9/2010 10:00 PM, Sam Clements wrote:
Just to offer some information--

Assuming that OED is correct, you can search the SSDI, Social Security Death Index, for "first name=junior" from birth year 1908.

You get 33 hits.

So, if indeed "Junior High" was "invented" in 1909, someone, somewhere thought about naming their bouncing baby boy "junior" before it became a fad.

Sam Clements
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Joel S. Berson
  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
  Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 09:58
  Subject: Re: Junior High


  At 1/9/2010 09:38 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:

    Today's Raleigh News & Observer reveals that in 1921, Mr & Mrs. Loomis High of Wilson NC named their new little boy "Junior".

  I wondered, so ... the OED's earliest citation for "junior high school" is 1909.  Like other fads, it was probably popular for a while.

  Joel ------------------------------------------------------------ The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org <http://www.americandialect.org/> <http://www.americandialect.org/>

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