Origin of The Name "Windy City" - The Hawk Wind, or Hawkins

The Hawk Wind, or Hawkins

Chicago's wind is often called "The Hawk". This term has long been popular in African American Vernacular English. The Baltimore Sun's series of columns in 1934, attempted to examine the origin of the phrase, "Hawkins is coming", for a cold, winter wind. The first recorded Chicago citation is in the Chicago Defender, October 20, 1936: "And these cold mornings are on us—in other words 'Hawkins' has got us."

The first line of Steve Goodman's song, "Dying Cub Fan's Last Request", is "By the shores of old Lake Michigan / Where the Hawk Wind blows so cold..."

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Famous quotes containing the word hawk:

    And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
    But like a hawk encumber’d with his hood,—
    Explaining Metaphysics to the nation—
    I wish he would explain his Explanation.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)