远行☆Echo, They are called hot because they are served hot off the grill. Hot dogs are sausages. Back in the days before there were government meat inspections, people wondered what exactly was in those sausages. Often the meat was not of good quality and people began to accuse the sausage makers of using dog meat. That is how they got their name! Today, "most recipes for hot dogs combine together a tasty blend of favorite meats (pork, beef, chicken, or turkey), meat fat, a cereal filler which could be either bread crumbs, flour, or oatmeal, a little bit of egg white, and a mouth-watering array of herbs and seasonings including garlic, pepper, ground mustard, nutmeg, salt, and onion." Choppy's explanation is interesting and except for the fact that no one has ever produced a copy of Mr. Dorgan's cartoon, and the fact that the term "hot dog" was already in use ( the first mention in print was in 1893 in the Knoxville Journal ) it would be believable. By 1840 the term "dog sandwich" was already in use. Here is a song popular in 1860 that gives the clue to the real origin of the word 'hot dog'. Oh where oh where has my little dog gone? Oh where oh where can he be? Now sausage is good, baloney, of course. Oh where oh where can he be? They make them of dog, they make them of horse, I think they made them of he.

You are correct, Westerners do not eat dogs. The exact history of the term "hot dog" is debated, but here is one theory. The original product, a type of sausage meat in a long, curved cylindrical shape, was sold originally in Germany and given the name "Dachshund". These sausages were sold in America in the middle to late 1800's as "hot dachshunds" because they were served hot. Perhaps the term "dachshund" was used because the shape of the sausage resembled the long, slightly curved abdomen Dachshund breed of dog. Because this breed of dog wasn't introduced to the USA until the last part of the 1800's, the term "dachshund" would have been unknown to many people in the last half of the 1800's. They wouldn't have known the reference to the animal. (That is my speculation). In 1901, a sports cartoonist named Tad Dorgan was at a sporting event where he heard that local vendors were selling "Hot Dachshunds". He made a cartoon of the event, but he didn't know how to spell "Dachshund", so he used the term "dog" instead. The cartoon had a caption that read, "Get your hot dogs". People liked the cartoon, and the name stuck. Hope that helps!