# Jefferson's Party - not Democratic-Republicans **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 5, 2004, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717 "2004-02-05T20:21:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/1 "2004-02-05T20:21:22Z")
From [The Mailbag item on Why is the Republican party called the GOP? And why the elephant?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mgop.html) – > [@](#): > > They decided to call themselves Republicans because they felt their ideals were very similar to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party. I believe the Jeffersonians were called simply the Republican party. It was during Andrew Jackson’s time that the Republicans split into the Jacksonians (which became the Democratic-Republicans and then the Democratic party) and the National-Republicans headed by John Quincy Adams. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2004, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/2 "2004-02-06T00:27:32Z")
Yes, but it’s not uncommon for later historians to refer to Jefferson’s party as the “Democrat-Republicans”; it’s not strictly authentic, but it’s clear. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/3 "2004-02-06T14:46:48Z")
I’ll take your word for it if you say that it’s common, but it seems unnecessarily inaccurate to me. But why do you say “Democrat-Republicans” instead of “Democrat **ic** -Republicans”? ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/4 "2004-02-07T03:29:07Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > But why do you say “Democrat-Republicans” instead of “Democrat **ic** -Republicans”? Jefferson called his party the “Republicans”, but his opponents called them the “Democrats” as a term of abuse. Eventually, they adopted the word as a badge of honor, and became today’s Democrats, today’s Republicans being a party formed from the wrecks of half a dozen failed parties in 1856. To avoid confusion, it is not uncommon to call the early now-Democrats-then-Republicans “Democrat-Republicans”, no matter what they called themselves then, just as it is conventional today to refer to dates between January 1 and March 24 in years prior to 1752 as, e.g., February 11, 1731/32, though people didn’t at the time. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/5 "2004-02-07T21:05:25Z")
We get added confusion in that democrat (small d) and republican (small r) are both commonly used political terms, independent of the current U.S. political parties. I think we’d save lots of confusion if the political parties would change their names to something fairly unique and reasonably recognizable, like Whigs and Tories. Or even Bull-moosers. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2004, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeffersons-party-not-democratic-republicans/227717/6 "2004-02-10T13:48:25Z")
> [@C K Dexter Haven](#): > > We get added confusion in that democrat (small d) and republican (small r) are both commonly used political terms, independent of the current U.S. political parties. I think we’d save lots of confusion if the political parties would change their names to something fairly unique and reasonably recognizable, like Whigs and Tories. Or even Bull-moosers. Yeah, but how could we tell which ones are the Know-Nothings? 😉