Someone else already provided a source. I didn’t say it didn’t have other names, just that WW1 had been used too even if it wasn’t as popular initially.
Comment on Naming it World War 1 was a bad omen
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 week agoSource for that?
Wikipedia says Time Magazine coined the term World War 1 in 1939. Relatives of mine, now long dead, who participated in it told me personally that it was called The Great War or the War to End All Wars.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
mech@feddit.org 1 week ago
Ernst Haeckel called it First World War in September 1914.
It was called that by other authors in the interwar period, for example Charles à Court Repington published The First World War in 1920.
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erster_Weltkrieg#Aufarbeitung_und_RezeptionLovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Reread the headline - Naming it World War 1 was a bad omen. The first of anything is very normally called “the first” because it’s just that. Headline is about actually numbering it with a One.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah, but that’s just like ‘this is the first time we’ve had a war that pretty much encompasses the whole world’. Not that it really even did, but that’s beside the point.
It makes more sense if you hit ‘world’. It was the first war involving the whole world. A sea change in the nature of warfare at the time. Very few places were untouched by it.
Before, wars were regional affairs at worst. This was the first WORLD war.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
This is how I’ve heard it described.