How we decide who told it first
Jokes are told orally, copied, and credited to whoever is famous, so "who told it first" is usually a research question. Each entry shows its working.
The labels
- Earliest known source found
- A dated source we could find and cite says this is where it appeared first. Earlier tellings may exist.
- Claimed (no document)
- The teller (or someone else) says so, but there is no dated document. Shown, but not treated as proof.
- Origin unknown (folk joke)
- Nobody has been shown to have made it up. It belongs to everyone.
- Disputed
- The popular credit does not match the paper trail. The entry shows both.
- Unverified legend
- A story people tell about it, with no source we could find.
- Origin not traced yet
- A well-known joke whose earliest source we have not found yet. We do not guess who told it first.
- Credited to the performer; date not traced
- It is credited to this performer, but we have not matched it to a dated recording, so we cannot say when it was first told.
The rules
- Earliest known, not first ever. We cite the earliest dated source we could find and read. Someone may have told it earlier and nobody wrote it down.
- Documents beat claims. A comedian's memory, an obituary, or "everyone knows" is shown as a claim and never counted as the origin. If the famous credit does not match the paper trail, the entry says so.
- Older relatives are not the joke. Earlier sketches or plays with a similar idea are listed as "older relatives", not as the first telling.
- Sources disagree sometimes. When they do, the entry says which and shows the differing dates instead of picking one quietly.
- Wording. A joke is written out only when it is old enough to be in the public domain (with the printed source) or is a folk joke retold in our own words. Anything still protected is described, with a link.
- Corrections. If you have a dated source that changes an entry, send it through the contact form (say it is a correction); entries are updated when a better source appears.
Take-downs
If a joke or description here is yours and you want it gone, use the take-down request page. Requests are read by the owners, and we hide first and talk afterwards.