Here's Why Hot Dogs Are Sometimes Called Franks

According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, it's a real thing), Americans chow down on an estimated 20 billion hot dogs annually. Accounting for sales of wieners at supermarkets, county fairs, and sports stadiums, it all comes out to about 70 franks per person. But why are they called that? Although there is technically a difference between hot dogs and frankfurters, here in the United States, they're practically interchangeable. If you've ever wondered, the reason that hot dogs are sometimes called franks harkens back to their origin, which is still a subject of fierce debate between Germany and Austria.

Sausages date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but frankfurters first make their appearance in the late 17th century when butcher Johann Georghehner began peddling his "dachshund sausages," lovingly named for the popular German dog, in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1850, one million Germans emigrated to the U.S., and they brought their adorable hounds and frankfurters (wienerwursts, if they were from Vienna) to their new home. Pushcart vendors selling dachshund sausages in a roll with sauerkraut made the rounds in lower Manhattan a decade later.

By 1893, at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, visitors couldn't get enough of the "little dogs," and around the same time, the German owner of the St. Louis Browns baseball team served them for the first time at the ballpark. Soon after, Yale University students jokingly referred to frankfurter vendors as "dog wagons," and frankfurters quickly morphed into "hot dogs" from there.

The appetite for hot dogs grew thanks to the unique New York City-style hot dog, baseball games, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who once served them to King George VI at a picnic. When Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker began selling his "Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs" from his Coney Island stand, hot dog mania swept the nation. Though considered to be the same, hot dogs are in some ways an Americanized version of the German frankfurter, which is not dissimilar from the many regional varieties of bratwurst.

Hot dogs and franks are made from beef, pork, or beef and pork trimmings that are ground, seasoned, and stuffed into casings. For traditional frankfurters, like many types of sausage, the meat mixture is stuffed into pig or sheep intestine, which, when cooked, gives the frank its much-desired snap. Alternatively, hot dogs can be made from a natural casing or a cellulose casing, the latter of which is washed off when the hot dogs are cooked and cooled.

Hot dogs and franks are so loved that even the inventor of the hot dog bun is debated. Some claim that a 19th-century St. Louis hot dog vendor substituted rolls for the white gloves he gave patrons to prevent their hands from getting scalded, while others argue that an Austrian baker created long Viennese buns to cradle his dogs. However you call them, hot dogs and franks are a culinary expression of both German and American ingenuity.