Antedating of "Yalie"

[Dave Wilton]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Laurence Horn
> Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 2:41 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Yalie"

> I'm not sure I buy the mascot argument.  Quite often if not usually,
> students can't be called by the name of their colleges mascot, I'd
> wager.  A football or basketball player from Penn may be a Quaker,
> but are the students so designated?  Are restaurants in Philly

Maybe I overstated the frequency of the mascot usage in reference to
ordinary students, but it is a common occurrence at many schools. To give an
example from an old episode of the "West Wing" which I saw in rerun recently
(paraphrased from memory):

SS Agent: I went to the University of Virginia.
Pres. Bartlet: So, you're a Mountaineer.
SS Agent: No, Sir. I'm a Cavalier. Mountaineers are from West Virginia.

Students from these two schools may or may not use "Mountaineer" and
"Cavalier" in this fashion, but clearly some people do.

And in any case, schools where there is a nickname for the students
(mascot-derived or not) far outnumber the ones that don't have one.