# Cowboy Hats? Mongols? Fnord? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 23, 2002, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388 "2002-07-23T15:19:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/1 "2002-07-23T15:19:18Z")
In this Staff Report– [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtengallonhat.html](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtengallonhat.html) We learn that cowboy hats were worn by Mongols– > [@](#): > > (unless you want to go all the way back to Genghis Khan and the Mongolian horsemen, who apparently wore something similar). And in this article by The Master— [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_016.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_016.html) We learn that John Wayne, Cowboy Hero, was an aspiring Mongol— > [@](#): > > The Conqueror, a putative love story involving Genghis Khan’s lust for the beautiful princess Bortai (Hayward), was a classic Hollywood big budget fiasco, one of many financed by would-be movie mogul Howard Hughes. Originally director Powell wanted to get Marlon Brando for the lead, but John Wayne, then at the height of his popularity, happened to see the script one day and decided he and Genghis were meant for each other. Unfortunately, the script was written in a cornball style that was made even more ludicrous by the Duke’s wooden line readings. In the following sample, Wayne/Genghis has just been urged by his sidekick Jamuga not to attack the caravan carrying Princess Bortai: “There are moments fer wisdom, Juh-mooga, then I listen to you–and there are moments fer action–then I listen to my blood. I feel this Tartar wuh-man is fer me, and my blood says, ‘TAKE HER!’” So, we must conclude that… It all ties together, somehow! It’s the Illuminati! I just _know it_! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Bindlestiff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Bindlestiff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bindlestiff)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/2 "2002-07-23T16:55:15Z")
New Jersy!? Get a rope. ---
**Author:** ![Ceejaytee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ceejaytee/32/2956_2.png) [@Ceejaytee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ceejaytee)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/3 "2002-07-23T19:24:58Z")
Lyle Lovett has a great song about cowboy hats, _Don’t Touch My Hat_, on [Road to Ensenada](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002OZO/qid=1027451822/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-2381391-5815136). The chorus goes: If it’s her you want I don’t care about that You can have my girl But don’t touch my hat ---
**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/4 "2002-07-23T19:27:36Z")
As for messing with a cowboy’s hat, remember what Lyle Lovett says: “You can have my girl, but don’t touch my hat!” ---
**Author:** ![konipshun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/d07c76/32.png) [@konipshun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/konipshun)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/5 "2002-07-23T20:28:52Z")
You know why cowboys wear the sides of their hat brims folded up? So four of them can fit in the cab of a pickup truck. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/6 "2002-07-23T22:43:55Z")
Lyle Lovett? What about [Chris LeDoux](http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Palms/6011/ledouxlyrics.htm)? _You’ll ride a black tornado across a western sky. Rope an old blue norther and milk it 'till it’s dry. Bulldog the Mississippi, pin its ears down flat Long before you take this cowboy’s hat._ [sup]This Cowboy’s Hat[/sup] ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/7 "2002-07-24T03:35:25Z")
Here’s another bit of cowboy hat lore that my dad taught me–never set your hat on a bed. It’s bad luck. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2002, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/8 "2002-07-25T04:34:56Z")
Hey JillGat, great article. I’ve been wondering about the ten gallon hat. ---
**Author:** ![stjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@stjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stjen)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/9 "2002-07-27T00:46:39Z")
(Let’s try this again, for the third time to get it posted. Sigh!) Anyway, I had long ago heard a slightly different origin of the ten gallon hat: Back in the days of the Wild West, when the primary influence down there was mostly Spanish, one of the larger denominations of currency was a gold coin, apparently known as a galleon. Now, if you were well-to-do, you’d go to the best hat maker in the area and purchase his finest (cowboy) hat. Said hat would cost you the sum of ten gold coins, that is, ten galleons, and thus you’d be wearing your ten galleon hat. We then, of course, mispronounced the phrase as ten gallon hat. (Not to dispute the fine research done by our esteemed researcher, but is this another feasible answer?) ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/10 "2002-07-27T01:31:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Not to dispute the fine research done by our esteemed researcher, but is this another feasible answer?) No. To expand, there was never a denomination of gold coin, used by the Spanish, know as a “galleon” or anything similar. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/11 "2002-07-27T02:47:05Z")
Yah. A galleon was a ship. You’re thinking of “doubloon”. ---
**Author:** ![Hardy\_Pritchel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/fbc32d/32.png) [@Hardy\_Pritchel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hardy_Pritchel)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/12 "2002-07-27T05:25:11Z")
I think your derivation of ‘ten-gallon hat’ is wrong. The Spanish have a perfectly good word for the number we call ‘ten’ in English, and a hatband is not ‘galón’ but ‘cinta de sombrero’. ‘Diez cintas de sombrero’ or ‘diez galónes’ somehow changing into ‘ten gallon’? I don’t think so. ‘Galán’: a handsome man, a movie star, a lady’s man, cognate with our old-fashioned noun, gallant: “a man of mettle or spirit; a gay; fashionable man; a young blood”. ‘Tan’ is an adverb that means ‘so’, and is used as an intensifier, as in English. ‘Un mozo tan galán’ could thus be translated ‘such a cool guy’, and he would no doubt wear a cool hat, too. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/13 "2002-07-27T07:03:54Z")
> [@](#): > > I think your derivation of ‘ten-gallon hat’ is wrong. The Spanish have a perfectly good word for the number we call ‘ten’ in English, and a hatband is not ‘galón’ but ‘cinta de sombrero’. ‘Diez cintas de sombrero’ or ‘diez galónes’ somehow changing into ‘ten gallon’? I don’t think so. Read it again. The article CORRECTLY states that galón is the Spanish word for “braid.” As in “braided hatband.” It’s a far-from-difficult stretch to imagine that white Texans and other English-speaking, sombrero-wearing folk knew what “diez” means, but only a sissy knows what a galón is. ---
**Author:** ![Hardy\_Pritchel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/fbc32d/32.png) [@Hardy\_Pritchel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hardy_Pritchel)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/14 "2002-07-27T16:38:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Nametag \* > \*\*Read it again. The article CORRECTLY states that galón is the Spanish word for “braid.” As in “braided hatband.” > > It’s a far-from-difficult stretch to imagine that white Texans and other English-speaking, sombrero-wearing folk knew what “diez” means, but only a sissy knows what a galón is. \*\* It is a difficult stretch to change braid into braided hatband, however. I know that galón means braid, but a number of problems arise from this derivation: If gálones are braids, you don’t need a hat with a high crown to hang them on. The brim would serve. Hell, you could hang a hundred braids off the brim of a cowboy hat, and ten would be no problem even for a derby. If gálones are not braids, they would be called something else, like cintas. Is there evidence of vaqueros wearing hats with multiple braids or hatbands? Is there another English word, derived from a foreign phrase, in which the number is translated and the thing enumerated is not? I can’t think of one. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/15 "2002-07-27T18:03:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Is there another English word, derived from a foreign phrase, in which the number is translated and the thing enumerated is not? I can’t think of one. It’s possible that I could think of one, but why? That’s not what happened here–both terms were translated. _Diez_ was translated (correctly) as “ten,” and _galónes_ was translated (incorrectly) as “gallons” (conversely, _galónes_ is not uncommon as a typo for _galones_ (gallons), and vice versa). Incorrect translation happens all the time. > [@](#): > > If gálones are braids, you don’t need a hat with a high crown to hang them on. Hang them? You don’t hang braids, you sew them. Indeed, such braids are normally sewn around the brim (and I do in fact believe that the “ten-gallon hat” is characterized by the width of its brim, and not the height of its crown). However, even if sewn around the crown, such a decoration is not a _cinta_. > [@](#): > > Is there evidence of vaqueros wearing hats with multiple braids or hatbands? I don’t know, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to find out. Is there any evidence that those huge floppy hats were ever called, or thought of, as “_tan galán_” (or as anything but dorky)? ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/16 "2002-07-27T19:26:53Z")
It might have helped if **JillGat** had offered some citation for the story she provided. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2002, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/17 "2002-07-27T23:27:23Z")
The American Heritage dictionary says it “might” have happened the way Jill said. [http://www.bartleby.com/61/52/T0105200.html](http://www.bartleby.com/61/52/T0105200.html) But it sounds as if she got it from “Webster’s World Encyclopedia 1999” which is summerized on this site…[http://www.hatsuk.com/hatsuk/hatsukhtml/bible/glossary.htm](http://www.hatsuk.com/hatsuk/hatsukhtml/bible/glossary.htm) I can’t contribute much at this point as most of my good etymological books are silent on this subject. I can contribute that Mathews cites the term in English first from 1928. But that source is from 1951 and usually subject to much updating. I’ll try posting this to Dave Wilton’s site and see if he/others can actually provide cites. As soon as we get a Lighter, Vol. III, we may know more. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2002, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/18 "2002-07-30T00:38:40Z")
Jill’s article also said: > [@](#): > > Stewart wouldn’t let me pour water into a hat, so we used anasazi pinto beans to discover that the largest-crowned cowboy hat would carry less than 4 gallons. I assume, here, that since you were using pinto beans, and since the cowboy hat is firmly associated with the American west, that you were measuring the hat’s capacity in **U.S. dry** gallons, rather than in the slightly-smaller U.S. liquid gallons that milk and gasoline are sold in or the slightly-larger British gallons that, um, British liquids are measured in. Before the British went metric, I mean. ---
**Author:** ![JillGat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@JillGat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JillGat)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2002, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/19 "2002-07-30T04:18:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DSYoungEsq \* > \*\*It might have helped if **JillGat** had offered some citation for the story she provided. \*\* I don’t need no steenking cites, hombre. (But I’ll give em if you insist. I like it better when you guys look it up and prove me right.) Jill ---
**Author:** ![davanden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@davanden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davanden)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2002, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388/20 "2002-07-30T12:24:24Z")
This all sounds like what John Ciardi used to call “spook etymologies,” like the famous one about “pumpernickel” coming from Napoleon remarking that it was “bon pour Nicole” (Nicole being his horse). Given the cowboy penchant for exaggeration, I’d say that the orgin of the phrase is just along the lines of, “That’s a big hat! Yup, holds ten gallons.” Or “I want one of them big ten gallon hats like Hoss has.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cowboy-hats-mongols-fnord/120388.md?page=2)