Corn Belt as an Enterprise-Naming Custom in the United States

Enterprises, be they for-profit businesses or not-for-profit organizations, require names to differentiate themselves from other entities. Since the late nineteenth century, US American entrepreneurs, corporate boards, and organizational founders have chosen to use Corn Belt or some spelling variant to identify their enterprises. This mixed-method research article examines the United States at the beginning of the use of Corn Belt as a vernacular term for an agricultural region. It identifies the earliest uses of Corn Belt as an inspiration for enterprise names; diachronically tracks Corn Belt enterprises in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, one of the core locations of the naming practice; and presents the enterprises across the United States that greeted the public in 2020 with Corn Belt in their names. The article highlights a naming practice by which residents of a rather amorphous agricultural zone bring a sense of place to their enterprises by bestowing on them a commonly known and highly respected identifier that many in the United States find immediately familiar. A study in traditional dialectology, this article brings together linguistics and geography to heighten public and scholarly appreciation of the spatial distribution of an onomastic marker in one part of the world.