Who Named World War II?

[danhughes1]

A note in John’s Bathroom Reader claims that World War II was so named by Harry Truman - in 1945. And that prior to that, FDR had called it “The War for Survival.”

Doesn’t seem right to me. Nobody called it World War II until it was over (or nearly so)?

[Chez_Guevara]

This Wikipedia article claims as follows:

The term “Second World War” was also coined in the 1920s. In 1928, US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg advocated his treaty “for the renunciation of war” (known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) as being a “practical guarantee against a second world war”. The term came into widespread use as soon as the war began in 1939. Time magazine introduced the term “World War II” in the same article in which it introduced “World War I,” three months before the start of the second war.

[Smeghead]

Kind of tangential, but I was just listening to a book Alistair Cook wrote during and after the war, and while talking about the period just after it ended, he said journalists were still debating what it should be called. So even if the name had been proposed much earlier, it wasn’t a done deal until after it ended.

[vetbridge]

@danhughes1

A note in John’s Bathroom Reader claims

Just wanna point out that although I will admit to owning/reading several of these books, they are filled with inaccuracies.

[Mk_VII]

Churchill’s The Second World War, which began to appear in 1948, pretty well settled the convention, although I doubt he was the first.

[KarlGauss]

Didn’t we just do this?

[Clothahump]

There’s an argument to be made that we have only had one World War. It began in 1914 and ended in 1945 with a 20 year cease-fire in the middle.

[samclem]

Searching my newspaper database, I get 9,000 hits from 1940-1943 for “world war II.”

[Walloon]

In case you haven’t clicked through to any of the links, Time magazine introduced the term “World War II” in its issue of June 12, 1939, three months before the war in Europe began.