Quote:
Originally Posted by Benzgirl
McCallan,
What is the story behind Bevo's name? Someone once told me, but I can't remember it. The only thing I remember is that it had to do with a score of a football game.
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There are a few rumors about it that get told more than others. I'll just post the wikipedia entry about it........it's a good summary.
Origin of the name Bevo
"Bo" made his first public appearance at the halftime of the 1916 Thanksgiving Day football game between Texas and archrival the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (later Texas A&M University), a game in which Texas defeated the Aggies 22 - 7. Following the game, Ben Dyer, editor of the UT campus magazine The Alcalde, referred to the mascot as BEVO. It is not known why he chose this name, though various theories have been put forth.
The best-known tale has been called into question.[9][10] The legend claims that the name came about due to an incident of vandalism led by students of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. It is true that in 1917, four Texas Aggies kidnapped the longhorn and branded him with "13 - 0", the score of A&M's 1915 win over Texas. Texas students are rumored to have retaliated by changing the steer's brand to Bevo, as is sometimes claimed. However, there is actually evidence that Bevo was fattened up and served at a football banquet in 1920, due to the fact the university did not have the money to take care of him and he was not tamed to roam the campus. The Aggies were fed the side they had branded and presented with the hide, which still read 13–0. Since Ben Dyer had used the term one year previously, this would mean that the A&M prank could not have led to the name. Another story states that it is possible the editor had "Bevo" in mind, which was a near beer. However, the beverage did not become popular on campus until a later time, so this does not explain why Dyer would make such a reference.
Perhaps the most plausible story was the one reported in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of UT: "Through the 1900s and 1910s, newspapers ran a series of comic strips drawn by Gus Mager. The strips usually featured monkeys as the main characters, all named for their personality traits. Braggo the Monk constantly made empty boasts, Sherlocko the Monk was a bumbling detective, and so on. The comic strips were popular enough to create a nationwide fad for persons to nickname their friends the same way, with an 'o' added to the end. The Marx Brothers were so named by their colleagues in Vaudeville: Groucho was moody, Harpo played the harp, and Chico chased girls ("chicks"). Mager's strips ran every Sunday in newspapers throughout Texas, including Austin. In addition, the term 'beeve' is the plural of beef, but is more commonly used as a slang term for a cow (or steer) that's destined to become food. The term is still used, though it was more common among the general public in the 1910s when Texas was more rural.The jump from 'beeve' to 'Bevo' isn't far, and makes more sense given the slang and national fads of the time."
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