How Teddy Bear Got Its Name

By Shlomo Maital

Did you ever wonder how the teddy bear got its name?   The answer: President Theodore Roosevelt.

   Here’s the story.

     In 1902, President Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino to go on a bear hunt. After a long day, Roosevelt saw no bears and retired to sleep. But a group of Roosevelt’s assistants cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a tree after a long exhausting chase with dogs.

     They called Roosevelt to the site and said that he should shoot it.  He refused to shoot the bear himself, saying it was unsportsmanlike, but said that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery (the bear was way underweight and scraggly).

     Clifford Berryman did a cartoon on the incident in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902.     Later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter than it really was. Today, we would say that cartoon went ‘viral’.

     Morris Michtom saw the drawing of Roosevelt and created a tiny soft bear cub and put it in the shop window with a sign “Teddy’s bear,” after Teddy Roosevelt gave his permission to use his name.   The toys were a huge success.   As a result Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. and became wealthy.

   A BBC program called “Witness” told this story recently.