Surrey

The surrey takes its name from Surrey, a county in southeast England just south of London. In the late 1800s, carriage builders there developed a light, four-wheeled pleasure carriage with two or three rows of seats and a flat or canopy top. The vehicle was designed for leisurely driving — not speed, not cargo, not social display. It was a family carriage, affordable, practical, and comfortable enough for a Sunday drive.

The surrey became enormously popular in the American Midwest and South between 1880 and 1920. It was the station wagon of the horse-drawn era. A surrey with a fringe on top — a canopy trimmed with fabric fringe — was the standard version. Rural families used surreys for church, for visiting neighbors, and for town trips. The vehicle was so common that it was unremarkable, the way a minivan is unremarkable today.

The surrey disappeared with the horse-drawn era, gone from American roads by the 1930s. It would have been entirely forgotten except for one song. In 1943, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote 'The Surrey with the Fringe on Top' for the musical Oklahoma! The song is sung by Curly, who describes the surrey in loving, specific detail: 'isinglass curtains you can roll right down, in case there's a change in the weather.' The song preserved the word.

Without that song, surrey would be as obscure as barouche or brougham. But Oklahoma! has been performed continuously since 1943, and the song is one of the most recorded show tunes in history. The word surrey exists in modern English because a lyricist needed a vehicle that rhymed with nothing, scanned perfectly, and evoked rural American innocence. The county in England has nothing to do with it anymore.