According to a popular myth, the use of the complete phrase “hot dog” in reference to sausage was coined by the newspaper cartoonist Thomas Aloysius “TAD” Dorgan ca. 1900 in a cartoon recording the sale of hot dogs during a New York Giants baseball game at the Polo Grounds.[9] However, TAD’s earliest usage of “hot dog” was not in reference to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, but to a bicycle race at Madison Square Garden, in the December 12 and December 13, 1906 editions of The New York Evening Journal dated December 12, 1906, by which time the term “hot dog” in reference to sausage was already in use.[10][9]

The earliest usage of “hot dog” in clear reference to sausage found by Barry Popik appeared in the 28 September 1893 edition of The Knoxville Journal.[10]

It was so cool last night that the appearance of overcoats was common, and stoves and grates were again brought into comfortable use. Even the weinerwurst men began preparing to get the “hot dogs” ready for sale Saturday night.

—28 September 1893, Knoxville (TN) Journal, “The [sic] Wore Overcoats,” pg. 5

Another early use of the complete phrase “hot dog” in reference to sausage appeared on page 4 of the October 19, 1895 issue of The Yale Record: “they contentedly munched hot dogs during the whole service.”[10] “

[Barry] Popik [described earlier in the story as the “restless genius of American etymology”] established that the term “hot dog” was current at Yale in the fall of 1894, when “dog wagons” sold hot dogs at the dorms, the name a sarcastic comment on the provenance of the meat. Did the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council embrace this finding, which Barry sent to them? No. We might have predicted this. But he took it hard just the same.

“sausage on a split roll,” c.1890, popularized by cartoonist T.A. Dorgan. It is said to echo a 19c. suspicion (occasionally justified) that sausages contained dog meat. Meaning “someone particularly skilled or excellent” (with overtones of showing off) is from 1896. Connection between the two senses is unclear. Hot dog! as an exclamation of approval was in use by 1906.

They were also called frankfurters after a city in Germany.