No one can agree where "Oscar" came from
The official name for the award is the "Academy Award of Merit," but who goes by that? (Answer: no one.) Two explanations are given for the Oscar nickname—a biography of Bette Davis says that the Oscar was named after her first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. But a more popular story is that in 1931, Academy Executive Secretary Margaret Herrick commented that the statue reminded her of her "Uncle Oscar" (an affectionate name she gave to her cousin, Oscar Pierce). Columnist Sidney Skolsky was said to overhear this, and wrote that "employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'" and thus, history was made.