Dunkin "drops Donuts" despite his role as inventor of the word

Dunkin & # 39; Donuts drops the "Donuts" of his name.

On Tuesday, the channel announced that in January, it would officially change its name to simply become "Dunkin". "The abbreviated name tests over the past year have inspired negative reactions, but they have apparently done little to persuade leaders not to make the change official.

The decision is all the more remarkable as Dunkin's Donuts played a crucial role in placing the word "donut" in the dictionary.

Dunkin's Donuts and Mister Donut, two chains founded by step-brothers in the mid-1950s, are some of the earliest known uses of the term "donut" as opposed to the traditional "donut".

The first Dunkin's Donuts was opened in 1950, a redesign of William Rosenberg's coffee shop and donuts, Open Kettle. Rosenberg started the franchise in 1955, opening the 100th place in 1963 and the 1000th store in 1979.

A representative of Dunkin & Donuts previously told Business Insider that the company did not have any other information about why Rosenberg had written Dunkin & # 39; Donuts as "donuts", although the chain can confirm that it has been since 1950.

The first Mister Donut opened in Boston in 1955 and expanded to nearly 1,000 locations in the United States prior to its acquisition by parent company Dunkin & Donuts in 1990. Today, Mister Donut is booming in Asia.

As grammar blogger Grammar Girl pointed out, the rise of Dunkin & # 39; Donuts (and, to a lesser extent, Mister Donut) resulted in a significant increase in the use of spelling "donut" since the 1950s, according to Google. Book data.

Today, the majority of the best donuts in America sell "donuts", not "donuts", with names such as Don & Bob's Pastry Shop, Sugar Shack Donuts and The Donut Man. Dunkin's may have popularized the "donut", but many other chains have agreed to adopt it.

Merriam-Webster was forced to add "donut" to the dictionary. According to a National Donut Day article in the Words at Play blog of the dictionary:

"We've encountered the donut variant in texts published and published since the middle of the 20th century – it was certainly aided by the famous donut suppliers – Dunkin 'and Mister – but in truth, they accepted In the Lineage of phonetic-based spelling reform, Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster also adopted …

"Our donut inclusion is based solely on evidence of the variant in various edited and published texts."