A “cup of joe,” is one of coffee’s most commonly known nicknames and one of its most puzzling. Unlike the term “java,” which actually refers to a particular coffee-growing region, the origins of “cup of joe” are unknown. This fun term first started appearing in print in the 1930s, with the first occurrence of it in a book coming in 1936. Here are a few theories, two historic and two linguistic, that might explain what actually gave rise to the term “cup of joe”.
Martinson Coffee was Joe’s Coffee
Martinson Coffee has trademarked the term “cup of joe,” clearly suggesting that the slang term comes from the company’s early years. Founded in the year 1898 in New York City by Joe Martinson, who reportedly was known to have a “bigger-than-life personality,” coffee may have locally been called “Joe’s coffee” or the most used term a “cup of joe.” Hence, as the company started to expand, “cup of joe” might have expanded from just a local fun nickname to a more widely used term by the 1930s.
(Nowadays, many people aren’t familiar with Martinson Coffee, but the company is a classic: It is known that Andy Warhol liked to paint their cans, and, more recently, Martinson Coffee actually made an appearance on the very popular TV series Mad Men)
Josephus “Joe” Daniels Banned Alcohol on Ships
In 1914, “Joe” Daniels banned alcohol from all U.S. Navy ships. As this was extremely close to the start of World War I, many young men would soon find themselves aboard a ship where the strongest drink available was coffee or a “cup of joe.”
When boarding dry ships, though, men who were used to going to the local bar or casually having a drink at home would have felt the ban’s effects. Thus, referring to coffee as a “cup of joe” would be one way to voice dissent and disapproval without directly criticizing the Secretary of the Navy.
This theory doesn’t necessarily account for the twenty-year gap between Daniels’ ban and the rise of the “cup of joe” in the 1930s. The term, however, may have fallen out of favor in the 1920s when sailors returned home, only to appear once again during Prohibition in the 1930s.
Java + Mocha = Joe
Linguists sometimes argue that Joe could have been a shortened version of Jamoke, which was known to be a commonly used nickname for coffee in the late 1930s. It was a combination of mocha and java. Jamoke could have been shortened simply to “joe,” a process that many slang terms sometimes go through.
Although coffee was exported from North Africa and the Middle East from the 17th century, back then the Dutch dealers also wanted to get in on the action. They began to settle in Southeast Asia and Indonesia and set up coffee plantations on islands such as Sumatra, Bali, and Java. They were essentially the original advertisers for Single Origin Coffee.
For some reason, the term Java grabbed the audience. Over time, this means generic coffee, not just coffee from this island. At the same time, that coffee was being made in Indonesia, it was also being made and marketed in Yemen. This is where the Arabica coffee beans are made; They come from Yemen and Ethiopia.
Traders who bought coffee in Yemen had to stop in the port city of Mocha and from there often went to Java. When they first combined beans from these two countries, they created “Mocha Java”, also known by the name of “Jamoke”. * And the shortened version of it is of course “Joe”.
Just like the original coffee, Jamoke has seen several alternate spellings over the years: Jamoca, Jamoch, Jamok, and Jamoka all came up.
The Average Man’s Drink
Since the term joe pretty much refers to an average man, “the average joe,” “cup of joe” could simply be a reference to an ordinary person’s drink. Nonetheless, whether this is the true origin of the term “cup of joe,” it just may have been kept alive by “joes,” or so-called average guys, following World War II. As diners started to pop up in the 1940s and 50s, working men who ate their daily breakfast at these restaurants might have been served “cups of joe.”
Although, no one knows for sure which of these four theories is the actual true version. All we can truly say we know for sure is that the first recorded occurrences of the term “cup of joe” come from the 1930s, and the nickname is here to stay. Actually, it’s become much more popular since the 1980s and it is still known and sometimes used today.
