Talk:Usona

Some say that Samuel Butler used it in his 1872 novel Erewhon, however the word does not actually appear in that text. Other possibilities include James P. Murray in 1885, though there is only one person who thought this. Conrad.Irwin 12:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I removed the attribution to Butler. It was Wright who said that, and he didn't start using the word in writing till 1925. Everyone else who says it is merely repeating Wright. No-one has been able to find the name in Erewhon or any other of Butler's writings. Kwamikagami 10:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Bit removed from main entry, if anyone cares
There was, however, the Usona Zinc Mining Co. of Kansas City in 1899, and a yacht out of Boston by that name in 1900. The Goodwin Pottery Co. produced a line called "Usona" from c. 1905 to c. 1912, and there were other brands, hotels, and companies of that name around the same time [Usona Mfg. Co (Aurora), Usona Films Co (Glendale), the Usona-Brazil Co (NY), etc.]. A small community founded in 1890 near Mariposa, California, is named Usona, from the same acronym. A US steamship named the Usona carried troops during World War I and sank in 1917. A famous hotel in Fulton, Kentucky, was renamed the U SONA in 1913, and kept that name at least into the 1930s. A company called Usona Bio-Chem Labs was in business in 1963, and a Usona Co. in 1974, but more recent use of the name may be a back-formation of the architectural term Usonian. Perhaps the greatest acceptance of the term, however, came from speakers of the international language Esperanto, where "Usono" is the word for the United States. (All Esperanto nouns must by rule end in "o", hence the change from "Usona" to "Usono.")

RFC discussion: January 2016–February 2018
A rare, obsolete term with extensively-footnoted usage notes mentioning just about everywhere the term was used. I'd call this encyclopedic, but it's far too boring to work as an encyclopedia article. Can someone prune this down to something that looks like a dictionary entry? Chuck Entz (talk) 03:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Hey Chuck. I put it in the Talk page. --Pas un coiffeur (talk) 09:19, 10 February 2018 (UTC)