Are you a rich elitist from the east coast?

Are you a surfer living in southern California?

Are you a cool, young person who is hip with the times?

If you said yes to any of these questions, you are, regardless of your gender, a dude.

Dude. This single word has had a chokehold on generations of frat boys, residents of seasonal beach towns possessing two Margaritavilles and all kinds of people across the Earthly realm. 

One may wonder: where did it come from? Why is this word a part of the lexicon for generations? How come its usage has not died down over time but, in fact, grown?

As the word has grown over time, its origins have long been disputed by historians. The most commonly accepted theory for where the word came from is the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Over time, people began shortening the phrase to the more simple dude (a shortened onomatopoeia of the word ‘Doodle’), and the word became a regional identifier used to refer to rich, younger, well-dressed men from the northern United States.

As  westward expansion grew in the 1840s, more Americans headed out to the frontier. And, after a few decades, there were people in the grand Old West who could call the place home.Back east, stories of the Western United States grew in popularity. 

Pulp magazines depicting stories of bandana-wearing outlaws robbing trains, adventurers ascending magnificent mountains, and local sheriffs rescuing damsels in distress from men who wore eyepatches began being printed in the East. Anyone with more than a few cents to purchase one of these magazines from their neighborhood general store was reading them and becoming entranced with the lore of the new frontier. 

People with the means to travel to Montana,Wyoming, Nevada or some other place out west began to do so. But there was one problem; it would be unsafe (and frankly boring) for a rich family from Cleveland or Boston to attempt to experience ‘life on the frontier’, which would realistically consist of helping an underpaid ranch hand deliver a baby cow before being shot to death at the local saloon by a traveling outlaw who had three teeth. Rich easterners would arrive at frontier towns expecting to live some action-packed fantasy life, before immediately taking the next train home, never even patronizing the economy of the newly-obtained territories. 

People living in these territories saw the business opportunities being wasted as the easterners trekked back home with frustrated looks on their faces, and knew there needed to be a way to profit off of these people. There needed to be a solution. And there was! Farmers ended up opening resort-style ranches on their properties where easterners could stay and ride horses or eat western food or wear cowboy hats and play outlaw for a few days before their vacation ended.

These ranches were called Dude ranches. 

As the term ‘Dude’ grew in popularity to describe wealthy easterners in Western towns, everyone and their mother became aware of it. By the time California grew in population as a legitimate state, dude had grown from a simple term to refer to a rich interloper to just refer to young men in general.

Across the nation, the word had grown in popularity with young people everywhere, every subculture and class. Everyone was a dude, even women, who were sometimes referred to as ‘dudettes’ or ‘dudines.’

In 1885, David Kawananakoa, Edward Keli’iahouni and Jonah Kalaniana’ole, three teenage Hawaiian princes who were pupils at an upscale boarding school in San Mateo, California, took a break from their studies to cool off on a beach in Santa Cruz. It was on this sweltering July day that the three began to surf, thus introducing the Hawaiian tradition to people in the mainland US. People at beaches all around the country began to practice the ancient Polynesian tradition, and by the early 1960s, surfing was a known pastime to people everywhere. It became especially popular in places like California and Florida, which were hot year round and had miles of coastline.

American surfing transformed from a sport into a subculture with dedicated music, especially with the rise of surf rock bands like The Beach Boys and The Ventures. 

Surfing was now associated with its own music, fashion and hairstyles. It was only a matter of time before there were dedicated slang terms related to surfing. The glossary of surfing expanded, and eventually it reached the word ‘dude’.

‘Dude, I wiped out on that wave, man.’

‘Dude, I’m so stoked to be out here today, brah.’

‘Dude, did you hear the new Beach Boys album?’

These could all have been phrases uttered on the hot, sandy beaches of the American coasts. 

As cool as surf culture was, and as much as it is celebrated in pop culture today, surfers in the 1960s were ostracized from society and seen as burnouts. No father from the American nuclear family at the time was happy when his daughter brought home a surfer.

In 1963, surf rock group The Kingsmen released a cover of an old folk song called “Louie Louie”, sung and performed in the Surf Rock style. Calling this song controversial would have been an understatement. Louie Louie was sung in a Jamaican Patois accent, which, although politically incorrect now, at the time would’ve been fine. The controversy didn’t come from the racism of the imitated accent, but the sound of it. Most people who had never been around Jamaican Patois had no idea what was being sung, so it was up to the listener to make up lyrics. Immature students would find ways to interpret bad words from the lyrics, and soon enough parents across the country began to denounce the song as ‘auditory pornography’, with the song even being banned from the radio in the state of Indiana.

The controversy of Louie Louie and its popularity with both the surfing community and youth across America, shifted its place as a song of oceanfaring beatniks to an anthem of burnout delinquency. Louie Louie is an example of surf culture that was appropriated into the culture of youth everywhere, surfer or not. The titular word of this article was among them.

After the sixties and the decline of surf culture, it was no longer ‘Dude, let’s go surf!’, it was now”

‘Dude, I flunked my Math test!’

‘Dude, did you watch the new Star Wars yet?’

‘Dude, let’s light off a firework at that wedding!’

In 1969, the film ‘Easy Rider’, starring Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson was released in theatres everywhere. In the film, after being arrested with Nicholson’s character, Fonda’s character explained what the word Dude means, as they sit together in a middle-American jail cell.  

“Dude means nice guy; Dude means regular sort of person,” Fonda said. 

Of course, it didn’t mean ‘regular sort of person’ to anyone else besides Fonda’s bike riding, leather jacket wearing, born-to-be-wild character). 

The word grew and grew in popularity, and by the 1980s was no longer a part of any obscure subculture. A 90-year-old man could utter the word and no one would bat an eye. 

In the 1990s, Dude reached its peak with the release of ‘The Big Lebowski’. The film revolves around a character only referred to as ‘The Dude’ as he gets wrapped up in mob business due to confusion over a name and a soiled carpet. The film, now a cult classic, has been burned into the culture of Dudes everywhere and has even spawned a religion, Dudeism, with dedicated followers and ministers, who legitimately follow the religion’s doctrine of ‘going with the flow’ and ‘taking it easy’. There are 800,000 ordained Dudeist Ministers worldwide.

We are now at an era in the history of the word where its usage remains at a controlled level. With the introduction of words such as Bro, Homie and Dawg, Dude is now no longer alone in the glossary of terms you can use to affectionately refer to your friends.

But as long as there are surfers, burnouts and everything in between, the word will remain in the English lexicon.