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Coffee has many nicknames - you may know it for what gets you out of bed in the morning - and they're all pretty straightforward, especially if you go black with your coffee. Whether you make it home, visit your local coffee shop, or head to the nearest chain to get a stamp on your loyalty card, coffee is a convenient and delicious way to feel more awake and start your day - and this is it are the only tricks you need to make the perfect pot. But all the brain juice in the world cannot solve this riddle: Why is coffee called a cup of Joe?
Like happiness, coffee comes to us from many places and in many forms. Latte, cold brew or drops: they all started on the old Ethiopian plateau when a goatherd noticed that his goats were eating a berry that made them so energetic that they couldn't sleep at night (if you've ever had coffee afterwards) Clock you can refer). The local monks found that the berries enabled them to remain vigilant for long hours of prayer, and coffee eventually spread to the Arabian Peninsula and Europe, and through colonization to Asia, the Caribbean and America, where it came from cultivated by enslaved peoples. Today, thanks to fair trade practices, coffee is available from around eighty countries. The history of coffee is long and fascinating, but it goes through hundreds of years with no joe in sight. Where does this nickname come from?
Why is coffee called a cup of Joe?
The iconic nickname, a "cup of joe," has several origins. One legend concerns Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy during the First World War. In 1914 he banned alcohol consumption on all ships of the US Navy. Since coffee was the next strongest substitute, sailors sarcastically viewed it as "a cup of Josephus," but since this was a bit mouth-watering, the nickname "snarky" was shortened to "a cup of joe".
Well not exactly. The story of Josephus Daniels is likely not true. The term "Cup of Joe" did not appear in writing for the first time until 1930 - long after the navy banned alcohol. In all honesty, the question "Why is coffee called a cup of Joe?" has no straight answer. A much more likely theory is based on linguistics. According to this theory, "Joe" is the simplified form of the word "Jamoke", which began as a nickname for coffee in the 19th century, a portmanteau of the "Java" and "Mocha" coffee beans. Therefore, "Cup of Jam" may have been shortened to "Cup of Joe".
A third theory is based on the slang meaning of the word "Joe", as in "He's just your average Joe". This joe refers to the common man on the street, a guy, a man, your neighbor who mows his lawn every Saturday at 8 a.m. (we wish he hadn't had coffee). A cup of joe is therefore a way of saying "the common man's drink". Maybe that's why all coffee lovers have these things in common. The question “Why is coffee called a cup of Joe?” May not have a definitive answer, but at least we now know who to thank for our daily cup: this Ethiopian goatherd. Even if his name was Kaldi, not Joe.
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