The Origins of the Name “Jeep”

Jeep has become legendary, and the story behind the name Jeep will bring you a lot of interesting things.

There are many different explanations for the origin of the name Jeep, and almost all of them are difficult to verify for authenticity. One widely circulated hypothesis is that it originated from the US military’s use of the initials GP (short for Government Purposes or General Purposes) applied to vehicles and transportation used for government purposes. When GP is spelled out quickly, it sounds like “jeep,” and this is probably why issues related to the name Jeep have arisen.

1943 Jeep Willys

However, R. Lee Ermey, a former US Marine Corps veteran and host of the television show Mail Call, a program about the history of the US military on television, contradicts the above hypothesis and believes that each type of vehicle and transportation is designed for a specific different purpose and is therefore never referred to as a “multi-purpose” vehicle. American soldiers hardly knew the concept of a “multi-purpose” vehicle. The GPW of the Ford GPW is an abbreviation for G (Government use), P (used to indicate the 80-inch/2,000 mm distance between the two axles of the vehicle), and W (to indicate the engine of the Willys-Overland company).

R. Lee Ermey on the television show Mail Call

Many people, including Ermey, believe that at that time, the soldiers were so impressed with the new type of vehicle that they named it Eugene the Jeep, a character from the Popeye cartoon series by E. C. Segar. Eugene the Jeep is described as a small, multi-dimensional, and problem-solving green forest creature.

Popeye the Sailor and the character Eugene the Jeep

The Slang Dictionary of the Armed Forces (Words of the Fighting Forces) by Clinton A. Sanders, published in 1942 at the Pentagon Library, defines: “Jeep is a two-axle vehicle weighing from ½ ton to 1 ½ tons used for reconnaissance or other military purposes. A term used to refer to small-sized vehicles (bantam-cars) and sometimes to other engine types produced in the United States used in the US Air Force; Flight training center; Armor forces, or ½ ton command vehicles.

This definition is also believed to be well-founded when the US Navy also uses the term “jeep carrier” to refer to small escort ships.

In early 1941, Willys-Overland introduced and demonstrated the off-road capabilities of its new off-road vehicle by driving it up the three-step porch of the Capitol Building, driven by Irving “Red” Haussman, a test driver for Willys’ new models. Prior to the performance, the driver had brought the vehicle to the Research, Development, and Testing Center for military vehicles and transportation located near Washington, D.C. Irving heard the soldiers stationed there calling this vehicle a “jeep,” so when Katherine Hillyer, a reporter for the Washington Daily News, asked what the name of this off-road vehicle was, the driver immediately replied, “That’s a jeep.”

Reproduction of the 1941 newspaper article

Katherine Hillyer’s newspaper article was published nationwide on February 20, 1941, which included a picture of the vehicle with the caption: “Legislators try out a new model vehicle.” The article wrote: “This is a vehicle serving the new reconnaissance mission of the US Army, known as the ‘jeep,’ or ‘2-axle off-road vehicle’ that successfully conquered the steps of the Capitol in the demonstration of Willys-Overland’s new vehicle yesterday. “

It is believed that this article made the public widely aware of the term “jeep,” and although Hausmann did not invent or originate the term Jeep, he was the first to bring it to the public through the media.

Thế Đạt (According to PL&XH/ Ảnh: VietJeep st)