The Mystery of “Bubbler” for Water Fountain in Rhode Island and Eastern Wisconsin

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

Hey, who’s this?

This is John from Minneapolis.

Hi, John. Welcome to the program.

Hi there. Thanks.

Okay, so I’m originally from Rhode Island.

And in Rhode Island, we use the word bubbler to mean a water fountain.

Or as we say in Rhode Island, a bubbla.

Bubla.

And it’s used throughout the state.

And when I moved to Massachusetts, I lived in Boston for a couple of years,

and people didn’t really know what it was in Massachusetts.

And then when I moved, so I just thought of it as one of those Rhode Island-only words.

And I moved to Minnesota in 1994, and at the time, people here didn’t know what it was.

But when I visited Wisconsin, people there knew what it was.

And so I was trying to figure out why Wisconsin would know what the word means,

but none of the states in between or in Minnesota would know what it is, what it means.

And so my question is kind of a threefold question.

The first is, where was the word originally coined?

And I’m told that it was in Wisconsin by the company that made the water fountains for schools,

but I’m not sure that’s correct.

And then, if so, how did it make its way to Rhode Island

without making its way to any of the other states in between?

And then are there other states between Rhode Island and Wisconsin

that actually used this word?

Great questions.

And you’re right that apparently one of the earliest references

appears to be from the Kohler Company.

I guess there’s a Kohler Wisconsin there.

Okay.

And K-O-H-L-E-R.

I think I have a Kohler toilet as a matter of fact.

I think that, yeah, because they make plumbing so much.

Yeah, but back in 1915 or so,

they introduced a bubbling valve that made little water fountains bubble.

What was it?

That way.

Early 1900s, I think 1914, 1915, something like that.

Yeah, because I find some uses of it in 1914 from Pennsylvania.

Now that’s interesting.

Yeah.

Because I know that they’ve done a lot of research on this at the Dictionary of American Regional English,

and what they’ve found is that the marketing area for the Kohler Company in eastern Wisconsin in 1915

almost exactly matches where the word bubbler was used then.

And then, yeah, what happened? Was there some kind of linguistic catapult that shot it all the way over to Rhode Island?

The truth is we don’t know. And there are a couple of theories about it that maybe it just sort of died out in between Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

And it’s complicated, too, by the fact that in Portland, Oregon, I think it was called the Benson Bubbler.

I think somebody adapted that, and so you’ll find it in Portland, Oregon, too.

So it’s one of these odd words.

I mostly associate it with Wisconsin, but I know in Rhode Island, part of Massachusetts,

and a few other places in between, you’ll hear it, but mostly concentrated in those places,

and it is a mystery.

Interesting.

When I moved out of Rhode Island, people looked at me like I was very strange when I said it,

and when I moved to, I just sort of resigned to the fact that it was a Rhode Island word,

and then all of a sudden I met someone from Wisconsin who used it and I thought, wait a minute.

You said brother!

Exactly.

My cousin.

So, yeah, well, that’s good to know, I think.

I mean, it still doesn’t explain how the states in between don’t use it, but I guess we’ll never know.

Well, unless we have some big linguistic discovery, but it’s something that’s puzzled professionals.

That’s all I can tell you.

Well, thank you very much.

All right.

Thank you so much for calling us, John.

Sure. Have a nice day.

Okay, thanks.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

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