I met a woman at a party recently who told me that when she was growing up, the members of her family were such New York Knicks fans, they didn’t even buy Boston lettuce.
Which reminded me—during World War I, when America was at war with Germany, Sauerkraut became “victory cabbage.” Frankfurters were called “liberty sausages,” and eventually morphed into “hot dogs.” Because the British were at war with Germany during both the World Wars, German shepherd dogs in Britain were called Alsatians.
And as recently as 2003, when France opposed the American (sorry, the Coalition of the Willing) invasion of Iraq, Congress voted to demonstrate its anti-France sentiments by renaming . . . French fries. They became “freedom fries.” (As American opposition to the war grew, the name faded away.)
But this one’s my favorite: in 1953, and for six seasons, the Cincinnati Reds changed their name to the Redlegs, thanks to the anti-Communist “red” scare. Amazing, isn’t it?