The term vegan was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson, the founder of the U.K. Vegan Society, who insisted that the original pronunciation was VEE-gin. However, some dictionaries now allow for other pronunciations, such as VAY-gin or even VEDJ-in. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Vegan Origin”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha. This is Pete. I’m calling from Bloomington, Indiana.
Hi, Pete. Welcome.
I work at a food co-op. This is a college town, and so the food co-op’s a pretty big deal here. We have our share, or maybe more than our share, of skinny jeans and hipsters, and we also have the Stocks and Locks group, the Birkenstocks and Dreadlocks.
So we were just chatting one day about the increase in the number of vegans that we serve at our food co-op and elsewhere around town. And it occurred to me that I’ve worked here for 30 years, and I don’t remember vegan being a word around much when I started here. And so that just got me to wondering if I feel like vegetarian is a word that’s existed for a long time, but I don’t know if that’s true about the word vegan. And then also I’m curious why it isn’t vegan or vegen with a soft G because that’s what’s in vegetarian.
You’re right.
Yeah, vegetarian has been around a lot longer than vegan, and we know exactly where vegan comes from. It goes back to 1944.
Really?
Yeah, there was a guy named Donald Watson who was the founder of the UK Vegan Society. And he wrote a newsletter back in the day called The Vegan News. And he suggested that that word be created by using the beginning of the word vegetarian and the end of the word vegetarian. And he was interviewed about that term later on because there are different pronunciations of it. And he insisted that the correct pronunciation was vegan.
Oh, really?
Not vegan or vegan or vegan, although you hear people saying those from time to time. And I think a couple of those end up in dictionaries. I’ve heard vegan used now and then.
Yeah, I’ve heard it used a lot, actually.
Are you a vegan yourself?
No, I’m not.
I see.
Okay.
All right.
I’m certainly into natural food. That’s our focus here. But under the heading of natural foods, we try to specialize in anything anybody wants from us. So there it is.
Very good.
Well, thanks so much for calling.
Well, thank you. I love the show, and I appreciate your assistance on this subject.
Sure thing.
Thanks, Pete.
Bye-bye.
If you’ve got a question about the history of a word, we can try to help. If you’ve got a question about how to say it, we can help with that, too. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. And find us on Facebook and Twitter.
