Oscar

We have all heard the line "And the Oscar goes to..." numerous times. In fact, we hear it each and every time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestows the most prestigious and recognizable trophy on a winner. But that begs the question: Why is it called an Oscar in the first place?

The version that the Academy itself supports assigns credit to Margaret Herrick, its former executive director, but there is no conclusive response to this. Herrick, who was the Academy's first-ever librarian, saw the statuette in the early 1930s and made a joke about how much it looked like her uncle Oscar. Since the precise name of the statuette, "Academy Award of Merit," was a bit lengthy, other staff began calling it "Oscar," and this quickly became its unofficial nickname.

However, Sidney Skolsky's 1934 article in the New York Daily News contains the earliest recorded use of the term. Without mentioning Herrick or her uncle, he referred to the prize as a "Oscar," and insisted that the name was derived from a vintage vaudeville joke.