I came across an article recently spruiking Ethan Slater’s role as Boq, a munchkin in the new film “Wicked” an adaptation of the Broadway musical about good and bad witches based on the Wizard of Oz. The film will be released in Australia. 21 November 2024.
The word “munchkin” was a creation of L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900. He never explained how he got the word. But there are hints as to what might have inspired it.
About musicals
I have to confess that I am not a lover of musicals. I can cope with comedy musicals because the idea of someone singing at critical moments of a script is quite hilarious, Rocky Horror Show is terrific. But I think a musical drama is contradiction in terms. They are so full of such saccharin-laced sentimentality that I just want the set to fall on the whole cast to end the show and put me out of my misery.
So although I know that Wicked is a prequel to the Wizard of Oz I know very little about it. The Wizard of Oz film is a masterpiece and the music is quite tolerable, certainly more so than the Sound of Music, my wife’s favourite.
(The worst ever evening I have ever had in the theatre was seeing the Baker’s Wife in London in 1988 (although I have also had to sit through Brigadoon). It was a production by Trevor Nunn (an eminent British artistic director) who chose his wife of the time, Sharon Lee-Hill, as the lead—a decision that became quite obviously one of the heart and not of the ear. The show flopped badly.)
About Ethan Slater
Nor was I aware of Ethan Slater, he did seem familiar, although I think it is because he appears to have borrowed several other actors’ names and mashed them together. BUT, he does have the credential, says the article, of having been nominated for a Tony Award (the New York theatre industry’s equivalent to the Academy Awards) for playing Spongebob on Broadway. (Spongebob Squarepants is a talking sea sponge who works at a fast food restaurant, attends a boating school, and lives in an underwater pineapple). A stellar career so far.
But what is a munchkin?
Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900 and then another 13 more Oz books. It is a modern fairy tale that tells the story of Dorothy, a Kansas farm girl who is blown by a cyclone to the land of Oz, where she is befriended by three, now iconic characters, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. Oz is also the home of the flying monkeys, minions of the Wicked Witch of the West, that have been used to symbolise enablers of narcissists. The characters set off along the Yellow Brick Road to find the Wizard who will grant them what they wish for—the road is an allegory for the journey to enlightenment. He also introduces the munchkins in the first book:
… she noticed coming toward her a group of the queerest people she had ever seen. They were not as big as the grown folk she had always been used to; but neither were they very small. In fact, they seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age, although they were, so far as looks go, many years older.
What is the origin of munchkin?
The word most like it in English is mutchkin, an old Scottish measure of capacity for liquids or for powdery or granulated solids of approximately 26 cubic inches or ¾ of an imperial pint (425 ml). Which comes from Middle Dutch mutseken, originally “a little cap”. But the similarity is mostly in the use of the –kin part which is a diminutive form, i.e. denoting the smaller version of something.
Another parallel word is manikin (from 1504) which is a jointed model of the human figure used by artists to create poses. It comes from from Dutch manneken, literally “little man”. Again it uses the -kin form as a diminutive.
Manikin seems to have morphed into mannequin at the time of the book (first used in English in 1902) for both a human model and a dummy to display clothes. Mannequin is the French equivalent of manikin and with a similar word history. I am guessing it picked up more chic as a French word from the Belle Epoche (the period just before the First World War when the arts flourished particularly in France and Paris).
But some suggest that a possible inspiration for munchkin might be Münchner Kindl, the name of the emblem of the city of Munich (of course in German München). Münchner Kindl translates as “Munich child” whereas in German little man is Männchen. Baum was of German descent and his name is German but I wasn’t able to find any obvious link to Munich.
Finding the answer
Baum never explained his inspiration or source for the word munchkin. He created a whole world from his imagination and, although I have loved asking the question, I am equally happy to just to have followed the yellow brick road .