Wiener dogs get their nickname from Vienna sausages. The breed’s official name is dachshund, which is German for “badger dog,” but their long, low-slung bodies look so much like a frankfurter that German speakers themselves started calling the sausages “dachshund sausages.” When German immigrants brought both the dogs and the sausages to America in the 1800s, the comparison stuck, and English speakers eventually flipped it around: instead of a dachshund sausage, the dog became the “wiener dog.”
The Breed Was Built to Hunt Badgers
The dachshund’s distinctive shape isn’t a quirk of selective breeding for looks. It’s the result of engineering a dog to crawl into underground burrows and fight badgers, one of Europe’s most tenacious burrowing animals. Europeans had been using dogs for badger hunting since the Middle Ages, but the dachshund as a recognizable breed began taking shape in the late 1600s.
Every exaggerated feature serves a purpose. The short legs let the dog fit inside a badger’s tunnel. Those legs curve slightly around the ribcage, and the compact feet work like shovels, pushing dirt behind the dog as it digs toward its target. The elongated ribcage provides extra room for the heart and lungs, giving the dog stamina for hours-long underground battles. Even the underside of the chest extends past the elbows, acting as a shield against sharp roots and sticks in the earth. At the front end, a prominent brow bone protects the eyes, and the jaw is surprisingly powerful, with large teeth relative to body size. This was a dog designed to meet a badger face-to-face in a tight space with no room to turn around.
That long, muscular body, built for tunneling, is also what makes dachshunds look so remarkably like sausages.
Sausages, Vienna, and the Name Game
“Wiener” comes from Wien, the German name for Vienna, Austria. Vienna and Frankfurt, Germany, have competed for centuries over which city invented the long, thin sausage now known as a hot dog. Frankfurt claims the frankfurter originated there in 1487. Vienna points to the word “wiener” as proof the sausage is theirs. Either way, these sausages were a staple of German-speaking culture, and so were dachshunds.
The connection between the two was a running joke in Germany long before the breed reached the United States. Germans themselves called frankfurters “little-dog” or “dachshund” sausages, playing on the obvious resemblance between the long, narrow dog and the long, narrow meat. The comparison traveled wherever the sausages and the dogs did.
German Immigrants Brought Both to America
In the 1800s, waves of German immigrants arrived in the United States and brought their sausages and their dachshunds with them. Street vendors in cities like New York and Chicago began selling sausages in soft rolls, and customers called them “dachshund sausages” after the familiar German dog breed. Over time, English speakers shortened the reference and started calling the dogs themselves “wiener dogs” or “sausage dogs,” completing the loop.
There’s a popular story that a newspaper cartoonist named Tad Dorgan drew a dachshund inside a bun at a New York Giants baseball game around 1901 and, unable to spell “dachshund,” wrote “hot dog” instead, coining the term. Linguist Ben Zimmer has called this “a very sturdy myth, even though there is not a bit of truth to this story.” No one has ever found the cartoon in question, and the term “hot dog” appears in print before the supposed event. The real origin is simpler: German immigrants, German sausages, German dogs, and an obvious visual joke.
World Wars Made the Name Even Stickier
During World War I, anything associated with Germany became a target in the United States. Sauerkraut was rebranded “liberty cabbage,” and dachshunds suffered a sharp drop in popularity because of their German roots. Some Americans started calling them “liberty hounds” to distance the breed from its origins. The backlash resurfaced briefly during World War II, though it faded faster the second time around.
This anti-German sentiment may have reinforced the use of “wiener dog” as an alternative to the harder-to-pronounce, unmistakably German “dachshund.” Calling them wiener dogs felt more casual, more American, and less like you were speaking the enemy’s language. By the time the wars were over, “wiener dog” had become deeply embedded in American English.
Nicknames the Breed Has Collected
Wiener dog is far from the only informal name for this breed. In the U.S., owners commonly use “doxie” or “dachsie” as affectionate shorthand. In the U.K. and Australia, “sausage dog” is the go-to nickname, drawing on the same visual comparison but skipping the Vienna reference. Some American owners also call them “low riders,” a nod to their ground-hugging stance.
The official name remains dachshund, and the breed is as popular as ever. The American Kennel Club ranked dachshunds as the 6th most popular dog breed in the United States in 2024, up from 12th in 2018. Whether people call them dachshunds, doxies, sausage dogs, or wiener dogs, the appeal of a bold, stubborn little badger hunter shaped like a hot dog shows no signs of fading.