[NU Sports] NU vs. NW or NWU or whatever!

[Michael Vance]

At 11/21/2005 06:07 PM, Jonathan Michael Hawkins wrote:
>Nice guess, but the nwu as a part of the domain name was intentional. 
>nwu.edu was registered on January 22, 1987.  nu.edu was registered by 
>National University in San Diego on January 6, 1993.

Yeah, I was going to point out that when Northwestern first joined the 
Internet, our domain was nwu.edu (and I'm pretty sure that it still works 
alongside the more current northwestern.edu).  I had an nwu.edu e-mail 
address back in the day.  Actually, a casbah.acns.nwu.edu address, before 
the days of universal directories and centralized mail routing.

>Academically NU uses "NW" or "NWU" in certain areas, including cites for 
>the Northwestern University Law Review ("Nw. UL Rev." or other variants).

Key difference there being "Nw." (lowercase 'w' and a period at the end) 
vs. "NW" (Uppercase 'W' and no period).  The formal rules of abbreviations, 
if there is such a thing anymore, would say that 'NW' implies two words, 
i.e. "North Western".

>The University of Nebraska at Lincoln follows in what is generally an odd 
>(some might say "dumb") tradition of the Big Eight....  I'm not sure why 
>the University of Nebraska enjoys being called NU.

I'd never made the Big Eight connection before, but I have noticed -- and 
been annoyed by -- the University of Colorado and the University of Kansas 
referring to themselves as CU and KU.

>In general, though, anyone who got confused at seeing "NU" on a televised 
>scorebug and then not finding their beloved ugly red colors deserves their 
>confusion.  I don't buy the confusion issue.  Anyone know how North Dakota 
>gets abbreviated?  How about South Carolina?

North Dakota is UND (both Internet domain and logo); South Carolina is USC 
(although they are just sc.edu; that evil school in LA has usc.edu).

-Michael