Why Is Coffee Called a Cup of Joe?
It is difficult to pin down when the word joe came to mean coffee or when the phrase cup of joe came into use. Several conjectures related to the slang term are posited as its etymology, but historical evidence and linguistic analysis help us identify the most plausible theories.
Likeliest origins
The term joe seems to have been used for coffee by 1927, at least in some contexts. As the Danville Bee, a Virginia newspaper, noted that year, the U.S. Navy’s specialized slang included joe for coffee. Linguist Michael Quinion also notes that the terms jamoke, java, and joe appear together in the U.S. Navy’s Reserve Officer’s Manual (1931) by Robert P. Erdman and suggests that joe is most likely a corruption of java or a shortened version of jamoke, itself thought to be a portmanteau of java and mocha, both words from locations known for exporting quality coffee beans—Java in Indonesia and the port of Mocha in Yemen. A 1931 compilation of American slang also lists joe as a word for coffee and, again, a possible contraction of the word jamoke.
The term acquired popularity, and in 1957 the Pennsylvania paper The Morning Call bemoaned “Waitresses...probably wouldn’t understand the ‘blond Joe,’ with which old timers used to ask for coffee with cream.”
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Then there’s the theory that coffee, as a drink for the average Joe, became known as a cup of joe.
Yet another theory is that the term came into being because of the Martinson Coffee company in New York City. The founder’s name was Joe Martinson, so, it is said that customers often referred to a cup of Martinson’s coffee as a “cup of Joe.” Martinson company officials are said to have been so confident about this theory that they trademarked the phrase. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, however, does not readily show a trademark with the phrase attributed to Martinson.
Outliers and rejected theories
A popular but questionable theory links the term to the supposed ban of wine provisions during World War I by the U.S. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels. Coffee became the beverage of choice, and association with the secretary gave it the moniker “cup of Josephus,” shortened to “cup of Joe.” But alcohol rations for sailors in general had been eliminated many years before Daniels’s ban, and the wine prohibition would have applied only to a small set of officers, too small a group to generate such popular slang. Besides, reliable records of the phrase date it to more than a decade after the order.
Some analysts suggest a connection between the phrase cup of joe and “Old Black Joe,” a song by Stephen Foster (an American composer famous for songs such as “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races”). This is viewed with skepticism, since the song was composed in 1860 and has no reference to coffee. Even so, an unexpected connection between the song’s title and coffee comes from Osgar und Adolf, a 1911 Tacoma Times comic strip about two German immigrants and their struggles with American language and culture. In the strip for February 27, the two run a restaurant, and Osgar explains to Adolf that if a customer asks for an Old Black Joe, they are asking for coffee without cream.
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Whatever the definitive origins of the term might be, cup of joe remains a popular expression, sustained in discourse through references in literature, mainstream and otherwise, and pop culture, such as in the TV series Mad Men and the name of the Filipino band Cup of Joe.