Talk Like A Pirate Day

About

Talk Like a Pirate Day is the international day of speaking like a pirate on September 19th. Started in 1995, the holiday first gained national attention when Dave Barry mentioned it in his Miami Herald newspaper column. The tradition has since continued in real life as well on the web.

Origin

According to their website^[1], John Baur and Mark Summers came up with the idea on June 6th, 1995 while playing a racquetball game. During the match, they began shouting comments at each other in stereotypical pirate lingo like “Arrr” and “That be a fine cannonade.” At the end of the game, they decided they needed to make it an official day, choosing Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday because it was the only date without a holiday he could remember.

They celebrated Talk Like A Pirate Day by themselves until 2002, when Baur stumbled upon the email address for Pulitzer Prize winning humor columnist Dave Barry.^[2] After conversing over email, Barry published a column about the holiday in the Miami Herald on September 8th, 2002.^[3]

Talking Like a Pirate

Using “Arrr” or “Yarr” has been used since as early as 1934, when it appeared in the movie Treasure Island.^[4] The stereotypical Pirate accent stems from actor Robert Newton, most famous for playing famous pirates Long John Silver and Blackbeard in the 1950s.^[4]

Spread

After the column, Baur and Summers were interviewed by radio stations across the US and overseas, including Australia and Ireland.^[5] In 2003, Dave Barry revisited the holiday while writing for the Daily News.^[12]NPR^[13] also featured a guide on talking like a pirate that year. Since then, the holiday has picked up momentum and has become well known around the world. England has its own official headquarters.^[6] As does Australia, which was founded in 2006 to raise money and awareness for Childhood Cancer Support, a not-for-profit charity.^[7]

Participation

People can participate by using the official pirate translator^[8] and Facebook users can set their pages to appear entirely in Pirate lingo.^[9] There is also a Pirate Name Generator^[14], a Pirate Ship Name Generator^[15], and even a Pirate Personality Builder.^[16]

The official Facebook group for Talk Like a Pirate Day^[17] has over 65,000 fans. For the 2011 celebration, Google Maps is hosting a Pirate Day party locator.^[18]

Additionally, many MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars celebrate the holiday with special events and Pirate Non-Playable Characters.^[10] In Kingdom of Loathing, users can wear Pirate costumes and defeat special Pirate enemies.^[11]

On the morning of the holiday in September 2009, “pirate day” took the spot of top trending topic on Twitter, and half of the top 10 was pirate-related:

1. Pirate Day
2. Jay-Z
3. Selemat Hari Raya
4. Talk Like a Pirate
5. Ahoy
6. Jennifer’s Body
7. Avast
8. #iranelection
9. Good Morning
10. Burnley

On Twitter

Search Interest

Every September, search for Talk Like A Pirate Day spikes, reaching the height of its popularity in 2006.

External References