Growing up with a name that rhymed with “banana” was deeply unfortunate because, as a child, I thought these dry-ass, stringy fruits (which are technically a berry, I think) were truly vile. And yet, for years, adults around me would call me “Hanna Banana” without even a whiff of irony.
Eventually, I willed myself into liking bananas ok — mostly because they are very inexpensive and come in their own biodegradable wrapper — but I still absolutely bristle when I hear this nickname. However, I consider myself pretty lucky than no one ever used the word “banana” in a hurtful way.
Which they definitely could have, since a.) I was a weird kid and b.) “bananas” is one of the most-used euphemisms for something or someone unusual, strange, or living with mental illness. But like…why?
Some number of years ago, I stopped used “crazy” as an everyday descriptor for something unbelievable or surprising. I did this for obvious reasons, like the stigma of mental illness — which is also I use it as a descriptor of myself! I literally call my mental illness “my craziness” because I think it’s less cumbersome and also less stigmatizing when I use it. See also: The name of this publication.
Anyway, during that time, I tried to find more precise or colorful or interesting terms or phrases. And one that I found myself using A LOT is “bananas.”
Why is “bananas” a metaphor for events or people or objects or places that are unexpected, bizarre, chaotic, or bewildering? Because if I were pressed to think of another fruit that reflects oddness, there are like, ten that I’d put before the humble banana.
“Oh, banana oil!”
The most agreed-upon source for this terminology comes from a 1920s era slang. From an Atlas Obscura article:
The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English traces the idea of bananas relating to craziness only back to the late 1910s; The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English roughly agrees, with its own etymology going back to 1924. These sources claim that the crazy banana meaning comes from the phrase “banana oil,” which, in flapper slang, meant “nonsense.”
This is interesting and sounds plausible. “Banana oil” is a real thing — but it’s not made out of bananas, and it’s not really an oil. Instead, it’s a solvent. And a flavoring. Yes, really.
“Banana oil” typically refers to a “a solution of isoamyl acetate in ethanol,” according to Wikipedia. Isoamyl acetate is a naturally-occurring substance that you might get from ripening fruit, including bananas. This “mixture of isomers derived from amyl alcohol” smells (and maybe? Tastes?) like the artificial banana flavor you might remember from the objectively worst Laffy Taffy option.
Anyway, a person who was not a chemist might be forgiven for thinking that banana oil was, basically, the essence of bananas, which is not true. So it may be that “banana oil” as a synonym for nonsense because of the smelly solvent bait-and-switch. Here’s a newspaper ad from the 1950s that I found which kind of speaks to this:
So maybe that’s the source? The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms seems to think so:
Nonsense, exaggerated flattery, as in I should be on television? Cut out the banana oil! The precise analogy in this idiom is not clear, unless it is to the fact that banana oil, a paint solvent and artificial flavoring agent, has no relation to the fruit other than that it smells like it. Possibly it is a variation on snake oil, a term for quack medicine that was extended to mean nonsense.
However! As is often the cast with etymology, there are other theories. Plus, this doesn’t exactly get us all the way to “bananas” as meaning “crazy.”
An essay from Grammarist finds a different root altogether, and one that gets us away from wood polish and into proper American ignorance.
It is believed that the term going bananas is a term that evolved from the idiom going ape, which also means to go crazy, to explode with anger or to erupt with enthusiasm. The close association of apes and monkeys with bananas in the Western imagination probably gave rise to the term going bananas.
I went on a hunt to see if I could find further proof of this and there’s really not much. Apparently there’s not a lot of linguistic scholarship around the euphemisms for mental illness. Weird! But it is true that “bananas” falls in line with other slang, like “apeshit.” Although, somewhat paradoxically, “a barrel of monkeys” is a fun thing, even though it seems like that would be sheer chaos.
I have my own theory about the use of “go bananas,” which is much more simple than banana oil or the false idea that apes and monkeys are basically identical and also they both eat bananas. My theory is based on scarcity of the fruit over the course of, well, pretty much forever until the globalization of produce.
Listen to this episode of Throughline to learn about the history of bananas
People got really into fruit in the 1940s and 1950s, probably because they had been living on powdered milk and grain alcohol for the last few decades. Peaches, oranges, apples, and grapes were a staple for most households. Bananas fit right in — and, looking at old newspaper articles, you can see that people were clamoring for banana recipes. They wanted new ways to use this inexpensive, popular fruits that were advertised as a way to save money and improve the health of one’s family.
Those bananas look a lot different than the ones currently becoming overripe in your kitchen (seriously, go check on them! You’re headed to Brown Town!), as you probably know. The original Snacking Banana was a different kind altogether which essentially died out due to disease, human rights violations, and competition.
So for a while there, bananas were hard to find, which caused people to get pretty excited when they could finally get their beloved yellow staple. Or, they went bananas. It wasn’t until the Cavendish — that’s the banana you know — which was resistant to major forms of blight, was developed and grown that you could always find bananas on the shelf.
There was even a song about not having bananas, which is referenced in this newspaper article:
Here’s the song if you want to really take a trip back in time:
So what does that mean for our modern use of “bananas”?
This brings us to my theory, which is completely unproven, which is that people started “going bananas” for bananas. I could also honestly see United Fruit — which is now Chiquita Banana — coining the term themselves, though I don’t think that actually happened. They did advertise A LOT though, including putting banana-centered education in schools. This drove a lot of demand which wasn’t always met. However, I haven’t been able to find an ad campaign that uses the term (until just a few years ago), nor have I found any concrete evidence of the first usage.
I mean, maybe bananas are just so weird and silly that they inspire people to feel a little weird? Or maybe “banana” is just an objectively funny word that lends a kind of onomatopoeic sensibility?
It’s hard to say. “Bananas” is certainly the least hurtful of a whole lot of euphemisms — but I still don’t like it as a nickname, please and thanks.