What is a Hoosier?

 Just a short note on an old, old question, thanks to Where did ‘Hoosier’ come from? An Indiana bill seeks to answer that question for good. We've got a Republican wanting making our official state slogan "The Hoosier State."

The problem is, the origin of Hoosier has long been debated. The Indiana Historical Bureau has a post on the theories and findings.

“As soon as our nickname came into general use, speculation began as to its origin,” the bureau says. Distinguished Hoosier writer Meredith Nicholson and many others have inquired into the origin of Hoosier.

She observed: “The origin of the term ‘Hoosier’ is not known with certainty. But certain it is that … Hoosiers bear their nickname proudly. Many generations of Hoosier achievement have endowed the term with connotations that are strong and friendly.”

Ray Boomhower, senior editor of the Indiana Historical Society Press, points to late Indiana historian Jacob Piatt Dunn Jr.’s lengthy research into the history of the word. 

Dunn found out that Hoosier was used frequently in the South in the 19th Century to refer to woodsmen or rough hill people, Boomhower writes. The word was then traced back to “hoozer,” a term from the Cumberland dialect of England that meant anything unusually large, like a hill. Dunn noted that descendants of English immigrants brought the name with them when they settled in the hill country of southern Indiana.

LAH never liked the term, would probably agree with this:

It wasn’t until later, in 1995, that Fisk University professor William Piersen theorized in an article for the Indiana Magazine of History that the term Hoosier actually came from Harry Hoosier.

“It is likely that, as memories of (Harry Hoosier) slipped away, and as the white people of the frontier adopted the nickname Hoosier for themselves, the term lost its original racial connotation … and came to mean simply an illiterate, ignorant, and uncouth yahoo,” Piersen wrote.

Making breaded pork tenderloins the state sandwich is also on the agenda.

Hoosiers cannot get their kids' schoolbooks for free should take notice.

sch 1/13/23