Clip from the 1970 anti-war, comedy Kelly's Heroes in which Donald Sutherland explains to Don Rickles what is and what isn't a hero (13 sec)
30 December 2020 [edited 31 December]
In classical mythology, a hero is a person with preternatural courage and abilities, often the child of a god, and who achieves semi-divine status. In the real world, a hero is an exceptionally courageous or noble person or a great warrior. And a hero can also be a large sandwich. The connection between the first two definitions is rather obvious, but how did the third come to be?
Hero comes into English from the Latin heros, which in turn is from the Greek ἥρως.
Digression: ἥρως (hero) should not be confused with ἔρως (eros, sexual love). The difference between the eta and an epsilon is a big one, and it has been confused in the past. In the eleventh century, the physician Constantinus Africanus translated a number of medical texts from Arabic into Latin. One of the diseases he wrote about was heros morbo, literally meaning lovesickness. But unlike the modern concept of lovesickness, the medieval disease was thought to be fatal, resulting in the unrequited lover pining away, sickening, and eventually dying if the love was not consummated. The Arabic word that Constantinus was translating was cishq (passionate love). And in his coinage, he used the Greek ἔρως (eros, sexual love) as his root, and he also coined the word eriosus (sufferer of lovesickness). But his Latin transcription of heros was later confused with the Latin word hero (noble man), and the unfamiliar eriosus was given as heroicus (heroic) in later manuscripts. Thus, lovesickness was transformed into heroic sickness, associated with chivalric ideals, and became a staple of medieval romances, where the hero often suffers bodily harm from not having his love returned.
Back to the main subject: the classical sense of hero makes its English appearance by 1534, when it appears in a translation of Erasmus’s A Plain and Godly Exposition or Declaration of the Common Creed:
I passe ouer here the fayned tales of poetes / by which the gentyles or hethen people were perswadyd and brought in beleffe / that of goddes & women / and of goddesses and men / were gendred & brought forth heroes.
The sense of a great and brave warrior is recorded in English a few years earlier in Gavin Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid into Scottish dialect. A pre-1522 manuscript (which I don’t have access to) spells it herys. The passage from Book 9 of the poem, as printed in a 1553 edition reads:
And na les murnyng, haid thay in that stede
For rhamnites fund hedeles, pale and dede
To giddir, with sa mony Capitanis
And grete heros, sa wrechitlie as slane is
Sirranus ȝoung, and the gentill Numa(And no less mourning had they in that place
For Rhamnes found headless, pale and dead,
Together with so many captains
And great heroes, so wretchedly slain,
Serranus the young and gentle Numa.)
Douglas’s use of hero here is something of a cross between the classical and the modern sense, as he is referring to ordinary men—and not someone like Aeneas himself, who was a son of Venus, but it is from a classical mythological source, the Aeneid. A fully modern use, albeit one that refers to the medieval period is from Barnabe Rich’s 1578 Allarme to England, which has Charlemagne referring to his soldiers as heroes:
Charles the great, when he had translated the name of the Empire to the Germanes, after the Saxons and Lombards were va[n]quished, gaue this honor to his souldiers saying: You shall be called Heroes, the companions of Kinges, & Iudges of offences.
Hero, in both classical and English use, could refer to either a man or a woman. But the feminine form heroine had been coined by 1587, when it appears in John Bridges’s A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters. Bridges gives a list of noble queens from antiquity, including Cordelia, daughter of Lear, and Boudica, and says of them:
Now although that these Heroines, & a great number mo. whome I refer to their diligence that list to collect the[m], were in religion to Godward al Pagans, and therefore their gouernment (in many actions) not so commendable, & in some vicious, yea, beyond the bou[n]ds of the sexe feminine: yet hindereth not this, but yt their gouernme[n]t & authority (if they vsurped if not, nor abused the same) might notwithstanding be good & lawful in the[m].
So, we have the first two senses of hero, as well as the feminine form heroine, established in the sixteenth century, but where does the sandwich get its name?
The sandwich sense of hero is an Americanism dating to the 1930s. It can be found throughout the United States, but its use is concentrated in the greater New York City area. We don’t know for sure why New Yorkers call submarine sandwiches heroes, but the most likely explanation, one that is supported by the earliest known use of this sense, is that the sandwich is so large that one must be a hero to eat it. The earliest known use of the sandwich sense is from the Brooklyn Times Union of 23 August 1936:
"A hero" does not always mean the same thing to the initiated and Tony Jordan, election district captain of the 18th A. D. Democratic Club. It is sometimes a husky man-sized sandwich.
Recipe: One half loaf of the long French bread, sliced through the middle. Spread one side profusely with juicy meat balls with Jordan sauce and fried green peppers. Clap on the top half of the bread, etc.—a hero sandwich. It takes a hero to eat one and only sissies have to cut it in half again, to go to work on it!
Tony Jordan (or Giordano) was a very successful, Brooklyn, Democratic-machine politican of the 1930s. The second generation of a local, political dynasty, his home was frequently the site of many informal gatherings where pols mixed with the citizenry and, since Ebbets Field was just a few blocks away, with the Dodgers. His use of hero, while probably not original to him, was undoubtedly a factor in establishing the term in New York City.
It is sometimes suggested that the sandwich name comes from the Greek gyros, a sandwich of pita bread, spiced meat, tomatoes, lettuce, and tzatziki sauce. But this is exceedingly unlikely, as gyros do not make their appearance in America until decades later.
[Edit: I added the paragraph about Tony Jordan on 31 December 2020.]
Sources:
Bridges, John. A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters. London: John Windet for Thomas Chard, 1587. 743. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. hero, n.
Erasmus, Desiderius. A Playne and Godly Exposition or Declaratio[n] of the Co[m]mune Crede. William Marshall, trans. London: Robert Redman, 1534, fol. 60. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2014, s.v. hero, n., heroine, n.
“Picked From the Throng.” Brooklyn Times Union, 23 August 1936, 7. Newspapers.com.
Popik, Barry. “Hero Sandwich.” Barrypopik.com. 11 July 2004. https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/hero_sandwich/
Rich, Barnabe. Allarme to England. London: Henrie Middleton for C. Barker, 1578, sig. F.ij. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Virgil. The XIII Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete Virgill. Gavin Douglas, trans. London: William Copland, 1553, 234v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Wack, Mary Frances. “The Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and Its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions.” Speculum, 62.2, April 1987, 324–44. JSTOR.
Video credit: Hutton, Brian G., dir. Kelly’s Heroes, Troy Kennedy-Martin, writer. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1970. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.