What is the origin of the phrase “hunky dory”?

Question

What is the origin of the phrase “hunky dory”?

Answer 1

Nobody really knows.

There's no agreed derivation of the expression 'hunky-dory'.

It is American and the earliest example of it in print that I have found is from a collection of US songs, George Christy's Essence of Old Kentucky, 1862.

We do know that 'hunky-dory' wasn't conjured from nowhere but was preceded by earlier words, i.e. 'hunkey', meaning 'fit and healthy' and 'hunkum-bunkum', which had the same meaning as 'hunky-dory'. 'Hunkey' was in use in the USA by 1861, when it was used in the title of the Civil War song A Hunkey Boy Is Yankee Doodle. 'Hunkum-bunkum' is first recorded in the US sporting newspaper The Spirit of The Times, November 1842.

Answer 2

My two favourite sources for this kind of question are The Word Detective and World Wide Words.

They both cite the Japanese road theory, the Word Detective then adds:

The least exotic theory of all, but almost certainly the true clue, traces "hunky-dory" to the archaic American slang word "hunk," meaning "safe," from the Dutch word "honk," meaning "goal," or "home" in a game. To achieve "hunk" or "hunky" in a child's game was to make it "home" and win the game.

The question of where the "dory" came from brings us back to our old friend "O.K." Children very often do not just say "O.K." -- they say "okey-dokey," thus engaging in what linguists call "reduplication," or the emphatic, joking repetition of parts of a word. "Hunky- dory" is almost certainly a similar product of reduplication by children who had won their game.

And Michael Quinion adds:

It may be that hunky-dory was the result of a bilingual pun, perhaps invented because American sailors knew the word dori and prefixed it with hunky as an imagined Japanese street of earthly delights.

My favourite quote is from the Word Detective:

It's an entertaining theory, but like most entertaining theories about word origins, lacks supporting evidence.

Answer 3

Etymonline says

1866, Amer.Eng. (popularized c.1870 by a Christy Minstrel song), perhaps a reduplication of hunkey "all right, satisfactory" (1861), from hunk "in a safe position" (1847) New York City slang, from Du. honk "goal, home," from M.Du. honc "place of refuge, hiding place." A theory from 1876, however, traces it to Honcho dori, said to be a street in Yokohama, Japan, where sailors went for diversions of the sort sailors enjoy.

But that's pretty nebulous.

Edit: I'll add that I don't see how you'd get hunky-dory from Honcho Dori, which would be pronounced something like "HOE-NN-CHO DOE-(d)EE" ( the (d) representing a soft vocalized tongue tap).