People Are Just Realising What The 'Pooh' In Winnie The Pooh Really Stands For, And I Had No Clue
Life is full of little mysteries, like what those black clumps on trees really are (nope, they’re not nests) and why towels have those flat, non-fluffy stripes (they’re called dobby borders, BTW).
As a “fun fact” lover, I usually pride myself on knowing the answers to those everyday quandaries. But while scrolling through TikTok last night, I found myself stumped; “so Winnie... the Pooh... what the fuck’s a pooh?” a site user asked.
While I might not have known the truth, though, Winnie The Pooh enthusiast (en-Pooh-siast?) Blake Silva did; and it’s a lot more complicated than I thought.
What does the “Pooh” mean in Winnie The Pooh?
Blake pointed to a book by Winnie The Pooh author AA Milne called When We Were Very Young.
The 1924 book of poetry, which predated the Winnie The Pooh stories, contained an introduction from the author which reads: “Christopher Robin, who feeds this swan in the mornings, has given him the name of ‘Pooh.’”
“This is a very fine name for a swan, because, if you call him and he doesn’t come (which is a thing swans are good at), then you can pretend that you were just saying ‘Pooh!’ to show how little you wanted him.”
Two years later, AA Milne’s first Winnie The Pooh book was published.
Its intro read: “If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I don’t know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh.
“That was a long time ago, and when we said goodbye, we took the name with us, as we didn’t think the swan would want it any more.”
So, when Christopher Robin’s teddy bear saught a unique name for the books, the boy “said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh.”
@blakespopnook stitch with @thisTikTok ????????????????✨ i hate stitching because you can’t edit your clips so i had to edit off-app! i’ll take any opportunity to talk about winnie the pooh ???? #winniethepooh#blakespopnook
♬ original sound - Blake Silva
So... what about the Winnie part?
The same introduction explains that link, too.
Milne, whose real-life son was called Christopher Robin, had a bear called Edward that the books were based on. But the name changed because the family went to the London Zoo with Christopher a lot.
Christopher loved a brown bear in there the most, AA Milne explained.
“This bear’s name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears it is, but the funny thing is that we can’t remember whether Winnie is called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie.”
So there we go; the character was named half after a swan, and half after a London Zoo bear.