“Beatniks” Etymology
The word “beatnik” was coined by Herb Caen in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958. Caen wrote “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only Beat, y’know, when it comes to work …” Caen coined the term by adding the Yiddish suffix -nik to the Beat Generation.
Caen’s column with the word came six months after the launch of Sputnik I. Objecting to the term, Allen Ginsberg wrote to the New York Times to deplore “the foul word beatnik”, commenting, “If beatniks and not illuminated Beat poets overrun this country, they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man.”
