I Just Learned What 'Hovis' Stands For And It's Very Of Its Time

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how products like Lego and Haribo got their names. 

Some brands, like Twix, use clever portmanteaus. Others, like Marmite, offer a sneaky reference to the making of their product.

What about Hovis, though? I don’t really know what part of wheat, or bread, the name could refer to, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with founder Richard “Stoney” Smith’s name.

Well, it seems that the iconic brand took its name out of a hat (almost literally). 

How come?

Per Hovis’ site, the brand’s original name was Smith’s Patent Process Germ Flour. 

Acknowledging this was less than catchy, the company held a national competition in 1890 to replace the moniker.

With a prize of £25 (roughly £2,690 in today’s money, per Bank of England’s inflation calculator), the competition was pretty hot. 

Eventually, Herbert Grime won the prize. His suggested name (“Hovis”) came from the name “hominis vis,” meaning “strength of man”. 

The brand later donated a Spitfire to the RAF named “Hominis Vis”.

Perhaps due to the success of the branding competition, Hovis had another competition to find the perfect loaf in 1900. 

This sought to find “uniformity in Hovis bread”. 

There was a lot of reference to digestion at first

I know we’re all obsessed with our gut health now, but we’ve got nothing on what must have been a chronically backed-up 1800s and early 1900s populace.

Pepsi, digestive biscuits, Maltesers, and more were all marketed as digestion or diet aids. 

The same, it seems, went for Hovis. 

An early ad cited Hovis bread and biscuits as a “cure for indigestion, recommended by the medical profession”. 

A later ad in the 1880s saw the words “promote digestion” rise well above the line stating that Hovis was “supplied to Her Majesty the Queen.

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RIP Queen Vic, you would have loved Gillian McKeith...