Nib asked
How did the Cold War get its name?
Nobody declared it or named it officially: a writer's phrase in 1945, a speech in 1947 and a book that same year made it stick, for a war with no open fighting between the superpowers.
7 steps, drawn by Nib. Read it here, or watch him draw it. Updated .
1a strange war
The United States and Soviet Union never openly fought each other. So why call it a war, and who named it? Nobody declared this one.
2who said it
Bernard Baruch often gets the credit, but George Orwell used the words in 1945. Baruch applied them to the Soviet standoff in 1947, and Walter Lippmann's book spread them.
3Baruch's speech
On April 16, 1947, Baruch told South Carolina lawmakers, we are today in the midst of a cold war. Most of his speech was about labor; the phrase is what people kept.
4the book
Then columnist Walter Lippmann wrote a run of newspaper columns, gathered into a 1947 book titled The Cold War. The title gave the nickname a home, and it stuck.
5why cold
So why cold? Because two nuclear-armed superpowers avoided open war. Orwell had guessed that bombs too terrible to use would bring a standoff like this.
6hot wars elsewhere
The shooting happened elsewhere: Korea from 1950 to 1953, Vietnam, Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. The giants backed sides instead of meeting head on.
7the whole idea
So the name was never official: an essay's phrase, a speech's slogan, a book's title, for a standoff that lasted until the Soviet Union dissolved on December 26, 1991.
No one signed a treaty naming it; a phrase from an essay and a speech simply fit a standoff where the superpowers never openly fought.