[Ads-l] Antedating of "Welfare Queen"

Thu Jan 2 12:56:32 UTC 2025

Here is an article from the British magazine Horse & Hound on the rules for naming racehorses. The American rules essentially mirror the British ones. I don't know how long these rules have been in effect.

[ https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/naming-a-racehorse-751763 ]( https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/naming-a-racehorse-751763 ) 

The big one is an 18 character limit, including spaces and punctuation. They cannot be the same as any name that has been in recent use (the names of famous horses are retired permanently). They can't be offensive.

Presumably "Welfare Queen" would not pass muster today, but I can see it being judged as inoffensive by a predominantly white establishment in 1974. Given that many (most?) such terms circulate orally for some time before seeing print, it's reasonable speculation to infer that the horse's name and the racist term are connected.

-----Original Message-----
From: "John Baker" <0000192d2eeb9639-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, January 2, 2025 3:56am
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Antedating of "Welfare Queen"

The closeness in time speaks loudly, but otherwise the connection is conjectural. For example, might the horse’s owner have chosen the name from a concern that his spendings on the horse could put him on welfare? It is hard to envision a scenario where a horse’s name is intended to refer to the racist trope. 

In any case, here is an earlier example, presumably referring to the same horse: 

“Half mile and 70 yards for two-year-olds . . . second, Welfare Queen, owned by Loren Fear of Missouri . . . .”

Miami News-Record, June 26, 1972, at 5 (NewspaperArchive). 

John Baker

> On Jan 2, 2025, at 2:07 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
> Indeed, but given that proper names, whether those for horses or humans, don’t actually mean anything*, we don’t know if this is effectively a bracketed entry disconnected from the 1974 et seq. pejoratives. I can’t begin to speculate on what scenario the namer had in mind. It does come only one year before the Linda Taylor episode (as opposed to a hypothetical horse named Welfare Queen in 1933), so maybe no brackets are needed, but how can we tell whether it involved the trope (with or without racist intention)?
> 
> *“This is America. Our names don’t mean shit.”
> —Butch (Bruce Willis), _Pulp Fiction_. See Kripke, _Naming and Necessity_ for theoretical support via Direct Reference theory.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jan 1, 2025, at 4:41 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
>> 
>> A massive upset in the race for earliest example of _welfare queen_!
>> 
>> Jesse Sheidlower
>> 
>>> On Wed, Jan 01, 2025 at 08:54:27PM +0000, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>> Over the years there has been some mention on this list of "Shapiro's Law," which claims that there are a surprising number of words and phrases that originate as the name of a racehorse. Here is another example: The OED's earliest citation for the racist trope "welfare queen" is dated 1974, relating to a woman named Linda Taylor. Wikipedia regards the Taylor story as the origin of the term.
>>> 
>>> A Newspapers.com search pulls up the Omaha World-Herald, 7 June 1973, page 38, column 2, where the horse-race listings include a horse named Welfare Queen. This seems like a very odd name to give to a horse, but there it is.
>>> 
>>> Fred Shapiro
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>> 
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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

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