Why Are The Academy Awards Called The Oscars?

The first Academy Award ceremony took place in 1929, two years after the founding of the Academy itself, but the origin of the ‘Oscar’ name remains a mystery.

Who Named Oscar?

In a new video released by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Robert Osborne recounts three different origin stories of how ‘Oscar’ came to be named Oscar, a phenomenon that took hold around 1935, a few years into the annual awards.

The first is that it was a journalist, who named the golden statue after a vaudeville joke. Another is that the Executive Secretary of the Academy named the statue after her uncle, and the third is that Bette Davis named it Oscar after her husband.

As the day of the 87th Academy Awards approaches, it has long been true that the terms ‘Academy Award’ and ‘Oscar’ are interchangeable, and both have been adopted by the Academy.

The 2015 Oscars will air live on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. ET/ 4p.m. PT on ABC.

Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Olivia Truffaut-Wong was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where she developed her love of all things entertainment. After moving to New York City to earn her degree in Film Studies, she stayed on the East Coast to follow her passion and become an entertainment writer. She lives on a diet of television, movies and food.

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