This story was originally published on Nov. 30, 2022 WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) -- You know...Dasher, Dancer, and all of the others. But do you recall...that you've been saying a few of them wrong? You're not alone if you answer no. It turns out we have all been for quite some time. It all goes back to that poem. Depending on when and where you went to grade school, you may have had to recite or even sing the poem. Who could forget something that begins with such a strange contraction like T'was? A Visit from Saint Nicholas, which you may know more commonly as The Night Before Christmas, was released in 1823 in an issue of the Troy Sentinel newspaper in New York. If you ever get to view the poem's original manuscript, you will see two very different reindeer names from the ones we all grew up with. Dunder and Blixem. Dunder, which some of us normally associate with the first half of a fictional paper company's name, is actually a Dutch word that means a sound like thunder. Blixem is a little more complicated but appears to be a phonetic spelling of the Dutch word Bliksem. It makes sense because if you combine them, you get Thunder and Lightning. Could Kansas see a white Christmas? Map shows which areas have best chance of snow Interestingly enough, in Afrikaans, the language spoken in South Africa derived from Dutch, Bliksem is now considered a swear word. They use Weerlig instead when talking about lightning and not trying to insult someone. Back to the poem. It was anonymously submitted to the Troy, New York, newspaper in 1823. In 1836, it was finally attributed to Professor of Divinity, Biblical Learning, Oriental and Greek Literature Clement Clarke Moore. Moore, whose farm and homestead currently make up the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, neither confirmed nor denied authorship of the poem. At least in the beginning. He eventually took credit, and the famous Christmas poem was included in an anthology of his poetry that was published 21 years later. In recent years, though, a debate began about who wrote the poem. Several scholars attribute the poem to Henry Livingston Jr., a Major in the Revolutionary War, who was also a poet and artist of Dutch and Scottish heritage. Livingston's family had always believed he had penned the poem. It wasn't until after Livingston's death that the poem was attributed to Moore. Livingston was also a distant relative of Moore's wife. Can AI chatbots make holiday shopping easier? Some of the supporting evidence for Livingston's authorship includes his Dutch and Scottish heritage, which made him more likely to know the words Dunder and Blixem, and his description of Santa Claus, which was in line with Dutch and Scandinavian tradition. So, you're probably asking, "I don't care about any of this. Why have I been saying the wrong names? When did that happen?" Well, that happened all the way back in 1823, when the poem was originally printed in the Troy newspaper. The poem's original manuscript includes the original spellings of Dunder and Blixsem. When the poem was published in the Troy newspaper, the names were somehow changed to Donder and Blitzen. At the time, Donder was the English way of pronouncing Dunder, and Blitzen is the German word for lightning. Of course, Blitzen also rhymed a bit better with Vixen. Later, sometime between the 1830s and 1840s, the names transitioned to Donner and Blitzen. No one can say for sure when exactly this happened. 5 recipes from the pros to give after-dinner cocktails some holiday flair The debate over who wrote the poem will probably rage on for some time. Given that everyone who would know for sure has been dead for quite some time, it likely will never be solved. Does it matter if we've been saying the names all wrong for the better part of two centuries? Not really. That's the nature of language and traditions. With time, they all change. Just as Blixsem is now a swear word in Afrikaans, words and traditions change, and no one seems to notice after enough time has passed. Although, it does make one wonder what other holiday traditions we might be getting wrong.