Hokie,
Hoos, Hoya. Three mascots to make you go
“Who?” All located within a hundred mile
radius.
Let
me repeat. Here are three major college
mascots or school nicknames most of us
wonder about. Didn’t you ever ask
what’s a Hokie, or who’s a Hoos, or what the
heck is a Hoya? Today, Silliman on Sports
will attempt to satisfy your “H” letter
mascot curiosity.
What
is a Hokie?
Someone who is inauthentic about being from
Oklahoma? No. Jack Okie’s hooker sister? No.
Well then, how about a turkey? No, says
Virginia Tech. They tell us it is not a
turkey. A guy named O.M. Stull created a new
college cheer song in 1896 to replace their
old one and for his effort, he was awarded $
5. That’s right, kiddos. Five dollars
for this ditty:
“Hoki, Hoki,
Hoki, Hi
Techs,
Techs, V.P.I.
Sola-Rex,
Sola-Rah
Polytechs…
Vir-gin-ia
Rae, Ri,
V.P.I.”
See,
there’s no mention of an Oklahoman, or a
streetwalker pushing chicken-fried steaks.
It’s a cheer sounding much like the Georgia
Tech “Rambling Wrecks” song. It even
highlights liquor, as Georgia Tech does when
it splits the word “Virginia” with an accent
on “gin.” So, thanks to a $ 5 contest, and a
bunch of gobbledygook (turkey reference,
possibly), V.P.I. became known as the
Hokies.
Hoos.
Down the road from Virginia Tech is another
head-scratcher, the Hoos, at Virginia, also
known as the Cavaliers. Hoos is short for
wahoos, a derisive term coined when 1890s
Washington and Lee baseball fans called
Virginia fans “a bunch of rowdy wahoos.”
Let’s chuckle at this one. On the one hand
Virginia has the hoity-toity nickname –
Cavalier – but when they wish to exploit
their rowdiness, they claim the “Hoos” – a
derisive, possibly racist name – Wahoos -
made even more derogatory by shortening.
Virginia students adapted the phrase
“Wa-Hoo-Wah” (stolen from Dartmouth) and put
it in their school chant revising it to
“Wa-Hoo-Wah, you-vee-ay.”
Hoyas.
When you watch Georgetown play, you
see a guy in a bulldog suit. That guy
symbolizes “Jack the Bulldog” their animal
mascot through the seventies. But Georgetown
is not the Georgetown Jacks or the
Georgetown Bulldogs. They’re the Hoyas. The
origin of the name is convoluted and
somewhat rocky.
Here’s
the story. Long ago when all Georgetown
students were required to study Greek and
Latin their team was nicknamed “The
Stonewalls.” We’re not sure if this was
named after Stonewall Jackson or due to all
the stone walls around campus. In any case
one of these Latin and Greek scholars
started a cheer “Hoya Saxa!” which
translates to “What Rocks!” And it
stuck.
We’re not sure how to
interpret this. Did the Latin
student really mean rocks like in their
walls or was the meaning more testicular
like the Georgetown team is really macho,
with courage and big stones? For mirth
purposes, we prefer the latter proving big
prestigious universities can be subject to
surprises when adapting mascot names based
on dead languages. In fact, all three
names – Hokies, Hoos and Hoyas – might
well be joke names with the originators
giggling in their graves.
