The True Origins of “The Real Mccoy”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dave, and I’m calling from Noblesville, Indiana.

Welcome, Dave. What’s going on?

Well, I have a question about a phrase called the real McCoy.

I work as a locomotive engineer for Amtrak, and my route takes me between Indianapolis and Chicago.

And about every two or three miles next to the track, there’s a signal, which are basically traffic lights for trains.

And my conductors in the train with the passengers can’t see them, so I need to communicate where the signal is located and what it’s telling me to do to them so that they’re on the same page with me.

So we passed a little town called McCoysburg, Indiana, and there’s a signal there.

So I called the signal out one day to my conductor in the back of the train, and he replied, you know, clear signal, at the real McCoysburg.

And I’ve heard the real McCoy before, and I don’t know where it came from, and I thought you and Grant would be the people to ask.

Yes, we are the people to ask.

Researching the etymology of this is a real pet project for a lot of people that I know.

Like the members of the American Dialect Society email list spend, I don’t even know how much time, finding earlier and earlier and earlier uses of this term in print to try to figure out its derivation.

And I can tell you what the group of them have come up with so far is that it comes from the 1850s.

1856 specifically is the date of the first use in print of a company called G. McKay and Company that made whiskey.

And they had the slogan, A Droppy or the Real McKay.

And it’s M-C-K-A-Y.

And it doesn’t matter very much that it’s spelled differently than I’m saying McKay because it easily becomes McCoy because McCoy is also a company.

Common name.

And so the slogan for this whiskey company became widely used to talk about something as being genuine.

And that’s it.

And it’s stuck with us now for however, 150 years or however long it’s been.

There is a slight hint in one of the first 1856 uses, there’s like three uses in print we can find from 1856, that it may have been a pre-existing term.

But so far, nobody has found any variation of the phrase earlier than that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, that is so neat.

Yeah, whiskey company slogan, and here we all say it, and we don’t even know.

It’s bugged me, and I know I’ve heard it before, and I thought, well, I know it means something authentic, but it’s really neat to know the origination of it.

And so just to be clear, it’s not an American company.

I believe they were in Scotland.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer, uses in 1833, and it just starts to pop up again and again.

And you can slowly through history see the spelling change until it kind of finally fixes on McCoy, M, lowercase c, capital C-O-Y, the real McCoy.

Okay.

And by the way, if you ever want to call again and talk about train language, we are all ears for that.

Definitely.

Oh, well, the railroad has a rich tapestry of unique language.

And there are all kinds of things.

One I thought I’d share with you.

Instead of going out to dinner or to a meal, railroaders go to beans.

Love it.

Oh, nice.

Going to beans.

Love it.

And another word for an engineer is a hogger.

So I’m not sure where that came from, but that’s a couple of things for you.

These are great.

I love these.

I wonder if that has to do with the locomotive itself.

Is that called a hog?

I’m not sure.

I mean, I know we called it, it was originally called the iron horse.

And when we go off duty, we don’t clock out.

We tie up.

So maybe that has something to do with the Iron Horse.

That’s outstanding.

Dude, David, I’m telling you, you’ve got to see me in an email with a bunch more of this stuff, and we’ll get you back on the show, all right?

Okay, yeah, you betcha.

Really appreciate it.

Take care.

Thanks for your call.

All right, thanks so much.

Have a great day.

It was good talking to you.

You too.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

I want to go take his train.

That’s nice.

Yeah.

Go to Beans to go have a bite?

Let’s go to Beans.

Let’s go to Beans.

Sounds like something surfers would say.

Go to Beans, dude.

We know in your workplace, there’s some stuff that you say that you’re used to, but everybody else looks at you funny when you say it at home or somewhere else.

We want that stuff.

What’s the jargon or the slang of your workplace?

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Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.