Topic: Who introduced the term BIR?

[George]

Apologies if this has been discussed at any length before, and I guess it's a bit like figuring out who invented chicken tikka masala, but does anyone know who first started using the term BIR?

I see that Dan Toombs and other recent authors are now using the term BIR.

Where did it come from?

(For anyone in the dark, BIR stands for British Indian Restaurant)

[Peripatetic Phil]

Apologies if this has been discussed at any length before, and I guess it's a bit like figuring out who invented chicken tikka masala, but does anyone know who first started using the term BIR?

Can't help you there, George, I'm afraid : the term has not yet entered the OED, which has only a completely unrelated and centuries older verbal occurrence :

[Secret Santa]

On the basis that I've been following newsgroups, forums etc. for well over twenty years and the first time I saw it was on here I'm reasonably certain that it's an invention of someone on this forum. First appearance appears to be from Muttley in 2005 if the crappy search engine is to be believed but he states it as if we'd already accepted the term, so not sure.

[Peripatetic Phil]

On the basis that I've been following newsgroups, forums etc. for well over twenty years and the first time I saw it was on here I'm reasonably certain that it's an invention of someone on this forum. First appearance appears to be from Muttley in 2005 if the crappy search engine is to be believed but he states it as if we'd already accepted the term, so not sure.

Definitely in use in 2006, and already featuring in the ToC for CR0 :

Add any requestes for BIR curry recipes in here..

from http://web.archive.org/web/20060704234020/http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/

** Phil.

[George]

First appearance appears to be from Muttley in 2005

I think you may be right that Muttley might have been the first person to use the term.

On 11 January 2005, on google groups, he asked:

"How do BIR's cook chicken?"
9 posts by 6 authors in uk.food+drink.indian

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB&fromgroups=#!topic/uk.food+drink.indian/0r-ZZsg3sa4

MarkJ responded, suggesting that Muttley should check out cr0, so perhaps he asked a similar question here.

So unless anyone can find an earlier reference, Muttley is probably the inventor, at google groups.

[Secret Santa]

I don't think it was Muttley George as he uses the term without explanation and I am certain that on first use, if no explanation was provided, people would have been scratching their heads as to its meaning. So its use must predate this one.

[Peripatetic Phil]

I don't think it was Muttley George as he uses the term without explanation and I am certain that on first use, if no explanation was provided, people would have been scratching their heads as to its meaning. So its use must predate this one.

I agree.  I would imagine that tracking down its very first usage will be as elusive as trying to track down the One True Creator of CTM.  And did the invention of the latter, I am forced to ask, mark the beginning of the end for the 1960's/70's BIRs which some of us remember with such fondness and nostalgia ?

** Phil.

[Secret Santa]

I don't think it was Muttley George as he uses the term without explanation and I am certain that on first use, if no explanation was provided, people would have been scratching their heads as to its meaning. So its use must predate this one.

I agree.  I would imagine that tracking down its very first usage will be as elusive as trying to track down the One True Creator of CTM.  And did the invention of the latter, I am forced to ask, mark the beginning of the end for the 1960's/70's BIRs which some of us remember with such fondness and nostalgia ?

** Phil.

Just track down the first use of Patak's pastes and you'll know when the rot started to set in Phil. Easier said than done of course.

With regard to the first use of BIR, I'm almost certain it started on this forum but unfortunately I don't think the search engine is up to the task of finding the real first occurence. Either that or perhaps some of the earlier parts of the forum have been lost.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Reading (as one does) John Maidment's Blog[1] to while away the idle hours between dinner and bed-time, I came across (for the first time) the Google Ngram Viewer -- an analytical tool that scans a vast corpus of printed books for instances of a given word (case-sensitive) over time.  Ecstatic, I threw "BIR" at it, and the results can be seen here.  What we can deduce from this is unclear, but there is a marked peak in usage in around 1974.  Why, I am forced to wonder, does the major peak in its usage coincide with the the year which marked (some might assert) the beginning of the end of the glories of the pre-Patak's BIR era ?

** Phil.
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[1] Just in case you think JAM is interested only in words, language and linguistics, you might like to read his recipe for Spicy Tomato Rasam.

[George]

What we can deduce from this is unclear, but there is a marked peak in usage in around 1974.  Why, I am forced to wonder, does the major peak in its usage coincide with the the year which marked (some might assert) the beginning of the end of the glories of the pre-Patak's BIR era ?

Phil - I fear your findings may be completely invalid because the term BIR is far from limited to Indian restaurants. For example, the first sites produced by a simple google search relate to the British Institute of Radiology! And there are many, many other uses. My opening question relates only to when it was first used in place of "British Indian Restaurant".