Why Are Hot Dogs Sometimes Called Franks?

The mighty hot dog is one of America's favorite snacks. You may have also heard the wiener in the bun called a frank. It's not hard to see that "frank" is just a shortened version of the aforementioned "frankfurter," which denotes a significant German city in the treat's history. It appears that it was Americans who split the word in half, for reasons unknown.

The earliest accounts of minced meat stuffed into natural casings include writings from Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age, ancient Rome, and Homer's masterpiece, "The Odyssey." But the dogs that we're mostly familiar with today began to take shape in the 15th century. Although there is major debate about who exactly created these pseudo-sandwiches, Frankfurt, Germany, largely claims that frankfurters were a hometown invention from 1484, thus the name. Another theory is that a German butcher named Johann Georghehner created the skinny, tubular sausages in the late 17th century in Coburg, Germany, and introduced them to the city of Frankfurt. 

With mass European immigration to America in the late 19th century, frankfurters naturally came with many Germans, as well as Austrians, who also claim to have invented the food. Locals and Germans refer to the latter's capital city, Vienna, as "Wien," which is supposedly where the nickname "wiener" came from. Although Americans mostly call them hot dogs now, you can still order a "frank," and most people will know exactly what you're talking about. And while the terms are generally used interchangeably, the two meats are technically different. Hot dogs can be made of beef, pork, or other meats, plus spices and fillers. Real frankfurters are smaller sausages made with only pork.

Like a lot of food history, facts and evidence of how a certain food came about or earned its name often get lost through the decades due to the loss or lack of written accounts. There is a theory that hot dogs are named so because of the imagination of a cartoonist in the early 20th century. After he saw them available at a New York Giants game, cartoonist Tad Dorgan drew a dachshund sausage in a bun with the words, "hot dog!", apparently because he couldn't spell "dachshund," but no cartoon has actually ever been found to prove this.

What is widely accepted is that the long, skinny franks Americans love to eat were once referred to as dachshund sausages by German immigrants, because their shape resembled the dogs of the same name. Adding fuel to this theory is that during the turn of the century, it was believed that consuming dog meat was fairly common in Germany, and (because the dachshund sausage was a new dish from Deutschland) these wieners were actually made with said meat. Astonishingly, the consumption of dog meat in America wasn't outlawed until 2018.

Despite controversy, the newly coined hot dog would become one of America's most beloved treats, not only in ballparks but also at 4th of July cookouts and any given summer day. Cities like Chicago and New York have their own legendary versions. Had it not been for Germany and its frankfurters, we may have never discovered the fun of a frank in a bun.