The teddy bear that Christopher Robin Milne received for his
first birthday did not start out with the name of Winnie the Pooh.
Pooh originally belonged to a swan, as can be seen in a poem
from When We Were Very Young. And Winnie originally came
from a bear at the London Zoo that Christopher Robin used to
play with. In Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne wrote that the
name, Winnie, was based on a polar bear. Whether a slip of the
pen, or just a memory lapse, that bear at the zoo was not a polar
bear, but an American black bear.
Winnie was brought to England in 1914 by an army officer
named Harry Colebourn. Colebourn had been trained at the
Ontario Veterinary College and was attached with the 34th
Regiment of Cavalry. On his way to join the 2nd Canadian
Infantry Brigade and to embark to England for the war, his train
stopped at White River, Ontario. There, Lt. Colebourn bought a
small female black bear cub from a hunter who had killed its
mother. Colebourn named the bear Winnie, after his hometown
of Winnipeg. The bear became a mascot for the Brigade and
followed the soldiers throughout their camp on the Salisbury
Plain.
When the Brigade was called to action in France, Lt. Colebourn
took Winnie to the London Zoo for a long loan. Colebourn
survived the war and formally presented the London Zoo with
Winnie in December 1919. Winnie became a popular attraction
and lived until 1934.
The bear was Christopher Robin's favorite at the zoo, and he
often spent time inside the cage with it.
So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes to
where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something
to the third keeper from the left, and the doors are unlocked,
and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs,
until at last we come to the special cage, and the
cage is opened, and out trots something brown and
furry, and with a happy cry of "Oh, Bear!"
Christopher Robin rushes into its arms. Now this
bear's name is Winnie, which shows what a good
name for bears it is, but the funny thing is that we
can't remember whether Winnie is called after
Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie. We did know once,
but we have forgotten....
--Introduction to Winnie-the-Pooh
The bear was Christopher Robin's inspiration for calling his own
teddy bear Winnie. Winnie is typically a female name, but
Christopher Robin insisted his bear was a boy. In the first
chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne writes the following:
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are
going to say, "But I thought he was a boy?"
"So did I," said Christopher Robin.
"Then you can't call him Winnie?"
"I don't."
"But you said---"
"He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what
'ther' means?"
"Ah, yes, now I do," I said quickly; and I hope you
do too, because it is all the explanation you are
going to get.
