BYU, YMCA both loved as 'the Y'

PROVO — The YMCA has confirmed what BYU has known for decades — there's power in a single letter.

The nonprofit Young Men's Christian Association announced recently that it will be calling itself just "the Y," thus joining an informal club of institutions that rally around the semivowel.

"We've both been nicknamed 'the Y' for quite some time, but it looks like they decided to make theirs official," said BYU spokesman Todd Hollingshead.

Provo's claim to the pronged letter goes back to 1906, when then-BYU President George H. Brimhall requested that the school's initials grace the mountains east of the University.

The plan was to install a giant B, Y and U, but after a student assembly line passed hundreds of pounds of rock, lime and sand from the base of the hill to the mountainside, they were too tired to consider additional letters.

Thankfully, they started with Y.

A few years later, the school added blocks, or serifs, to the edge of the Y, creating the giant letter seen today on the east bench. At 380 feet high and 130 feet wide, it's one of the largest such letters in the country, according to BYU.

Along with the giant rock letter, referring to Brigham Young University as "the Y." became even more common in the 30s and 40s, when the three major colleges in the state adopted acronym identities, explained Ray Beckham, former BYU sports information director, athletic council member and decade-long alumni director.

Back then, Utah State was "the A.C.," the agricultural college, Utah was, of course, "the U.," and it was just easier to call BYU, "the Y."

Provo native and BYU English professor Douglas Thayer attended BYH — Brigham Young High School — and remembers when BYU was four buildings on the hill: the Maeser building, Grant Library (now the Testing Center), the Brimhall and the old Joseph Smith Building.

He started college in 1948, which students then called "Brigham Young," "the Y.," "Temple Hill" or the comical "purity playhouse" and "the monastery."

(Neither of which made it onto sweatshirts.)

Today's students most often call it BYU rather than "the Y.," but there's no mistaking the bold letter, which adorns everything from footballs and T-shirts to key chains and license plates.

But head out east, and the blue-and-white Y takes on a different meaning.