The Origin of Zeppo's name

"Our stage names were given to us by a monologist named Art Fisher. He was in the habit of giving people nicknames and they stuck. He named Leonard Chico because girls were called chicks in those days and Chico loved girls. Arthur became Harpo for obvious reasons, Gummo got his name because he was fond of gum sole shoes, and he named me because I was stern and rather serious. Herbert who became Zeppo was too young at that time and wasn't in the act. He got his name later on".

(Groucho in The Marx Bros. Scrapbook)

There are different theories to where Herbert Marx got his stage name. Groucho usually said that the name was derived from the Zeppelin, a new invention at the time of Herbert's birth. The first zeppelin flew in July 1900, and Herbert was born seven months later in February 1901. In her book Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank, Zeppo's second wife Barbara (who later remarried a certain Frank Sinatra) repeats the Zeppelin story, saying that she heard it from all of the Marx Brothers.

The documentary The Unknown Marx Brothers gives two different explanations to the nickname. Chico's daughter Maxine said that when the Marx Brothers lived in Chicago, a popular style of humor was the "Zeke and Zeb" joke, which made fun of slow-witted Midwesterners. One day Chico found Herbert sitting on a fence, greeting him by saying "Hi, Zeke"! Chico responded with "Hi, Zeb" and the name stuck. The brothers thereafter called him "Zeb" or ”Zep”, and when he joined the act it became "Zeppo" to match his brothers. In the same documentary, Harpo's son Bill said that there once was a "freak" at the Ringling Brothers Circus called Zippo and that the older Marxes named their kid brother Herbert after him. According to Bill Marx, Herbert hated that connection.

Zippo, or rather Zip, was an African American named William Henry Johnson, born in New Jersey in 1842/3. Maybe suffering from microcephaly (a neurodevelopmental disorder in which the circumference of the head is more than two standard deviations smaller than average for the person's age and sex), Johnson performed in lots of freak shows from the 1860s up until his death in 1926, variously billed as Zip the Pinhead, The Monkey Man, The Man-Monkey, The Missing Link or the What is it? Photos of Johnson shows that Zeppo Marx actually resembled him a bit, at least enough for the older brothers to joke about. So this is what I think happened;

• In the 1910s, the older Marxes began to call Herbert Zip after the Zip the Pinhead (which would also add a little extra to the "Howdy Zeke"/"Howdy Zeb/Zip"-story).
• Herbert hated it and remade it as Zeppo, with the spelling taken from the Zeppelins
• In the 1930s, the Zeppelin-connection became the official explanation (like in the promotion photo of the brothers sitting in chairs during the filming of Monkey Business)
• In the early 1960s, Harpo's reference in his autobiography hinted on the real origin (although Zip the Monkey Man became Zippo the Monkey in his version)
• In the 1990s, Bill Marx finally told the true story, even if it went largely unnoticed.