If you google something like “origin of the word brunch,” you will get a bunch of articles that make the same claim. Here’s how Google’s AI puts it:
“The word ‘brunch’ is a combination of ‘breakfast”‘ and ‘lunch’. It was first used in 1895 by Guy Beringer in an article for Hunter’s Weekly. Beringer suggested it as an alternative to the traditional heavy post-church Sunday meal, proposing a lighter, more sociable meal eaten around noon.”
(And by the way, I saw that logical punctuation, AI.)
My friend “Dino” Don Lessem sent me one of those articles, with a comment along the lines of “You probably know this, but…”
I had to respond that I didn’t know it. I had written a post on the word, but my first example is an article from the U.S. newspaper The Independent, also from 1895: “Breakfast is ‘brekker’ in the Oxford tongue; when a man makes lunch his first meal of the day it becomes ‘brunch’.”
At this point I didn’t know when in 1895 each quote appeared, but the OED supplied the receipts, bless its heart:
In AI and the internet’s defense, it turns out the mistaken attribution has a long history. In August 1896, Punch reported,
“To be fashionable nowadays we must ‘brunch’. Truly an excellent portmanteau word, introduced, by the way, last year, by Mr. Guy Beringer, in the now defunct Hunter’s Weekly, and indicating a combined breakfast and lunch.”
But the story isn’t over. I spent a little time on Google Books, and found another 1895 citation, this one in a book called Giddy Oxon. An Eight Weeks Dialogue, and Other Pieces. The quote comes from an arch (the whole thing is arch) dramatic piece called “Men’s Badgerings.” A character called Strurt is being addressed, then speaks
The book itself doesn’t indicate the month of publication, and I have not been able to find any record of or reference to Giddy Oxon. in any other source, including Google and the British Library.
Can anyone help me find the date it was published? Until you do, The Independent can still claim the first use of “brunch” in print.
Update: Not surprisingly, a NOOBs reader came swiftly the rescue. Not long after the above was published, Hugh Waterhouse posted a comment that he had found an article in the May 28, 1895, edition of the Western Morning News concerning happenings at Oxford, which included this quote : “Eights’ week literature is well to the fore this year, and is evidenced in two short-lived publications, “Giddy Oxon” and the “Octopus”. They are both well up to the standard of such evanoescent [sic] literature,…” Hugh was kind enough not to point out that in my post I mangled “eights week,” which, as he explained, is “the week in the year when student rowing eights compete in races to be crowned ‘Head of the River’.” (Dave Lull independently emailed me with another mention of Giddy Oxon in May 1895.)
Bottom line, “brunch” was used as early as May 1895, three months before the OED‘s first citation.
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
The subtitle of ‘Giddy Oxon’ is ‘An Eights Week Dialogue…’ meaning that it is related to Eights Week, the week in the year when student rowing eights compete in races to be crowned ‘Head of the River’.
On Tuesday 28 May 1895 a column headed ‘UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE’ appeared in the Western Morning News. The first part is about Oxford and includes the following paragraph:
“Eights’ week literature is well to the fore this year, and is evidenced in two short-lived publications, “Giddy Oxon” and the “Octopus”. They are both well up to the standard of such evanoescent [sic] literature, though they hardly approach in excellence our old friend “Rattle,” which for years has been associated with Eights week, and shoud be resuscitated.”
The implication being that the publication was produced specifically for Eights Week. Later in the column there is a mention that the “Eights” started on Thursday, ie May 23rd.
Hugh Waterhouse, born but not raised in Oxford.
(As spurious bona fides I offer my profile picture which shows my brother and me on the doorstep of my grandparents’ house in the Great Quad of Christ Church College.)
I went back to the logical pronunciation link and I still can’t work out which is supposed to be logical: the illogical way Americans do it, or the logical way Australians do it? (You can’t put a fullstop inside a quote unless the entire sentence is the quote, otherwise there’s no fullstop for the non-quote parts of the sentence.)
It’s exactly the same as brackets – the previous sentence was all in brackets, so the fullstop is, too. But sometimes the bracket isn’t the entire sentence so the fullstop is at the end (I do this a lot).
I like Linner – the meal you have around 3pm.
Hugh, I searched “Giddy Oxon” and “Octopus” and got https://www.giddyoctopus.co.uk a present-day design firm. Could easily be coincidence, as businesses called Giggling Sausage, Giggling Squid, etc, are ten-a-penny. But Giddy Octopus don’t do food, and they’re based in Swindon, near Oxford.
Octopuses are associated with the number Eight, with the wet splashy stuff, and fit with Ocsford, so they could be a long-standing symbol, mascot, genius loci, etc. – at the Uni, or more widely in the area.
Some readers won’t know that Oxon. is an abbreviation of Oxfordshire, or of Oxford itself. I enjoy writing it when I use snail-mail; along with Salop, Hants, and of course the greatest county of them all, Northants.
Giddy, Oxon, I think refers to Gilbert Davies who was born Giddy until he changed it to his wife’s name of Gilbert. He was at Oxford (Oxon)
Thanks, I don’t know how you found that (did you know it? !) but Google AI agrees:
>>> AI Overview – Yes, Davies Giddy, later Davies Gilbert, is a prominent figure often associated with the name “Giddy, Oxon.” <<<
Though I’ve found AI to be patchy at best, often unreliable or near-useless.
I recently came across a French band with the suspicious name Anchois Pommier (Anchovy Apple-tree). A search only provided me with ‘François Premier’ after a bit of fiddling around, but didn’t find the pun I first thought of, ‘Anchois Palmier’, till I nudged it in that direction. (It’s a food and so would be more obvious to a human).
I find AI overview to be sometimes an inferior version of Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davies_Gilbert
Very probably Oxford slang in the first place. From other things I’ve read, this was a bit of a trend at the time – shortening words (in ways that were likely to annoy your tutors, and your parents!) The most egregious I’ve heard of was “wagger-pagger-bagger” for “waste-paper-basket” – in other words, the bin in your study! Your “scout” – domestic servant employed by the college – would have to empty that.
Beringer might have picked up on this – or he might have happened to coin the same word at roughly the same time. Perfectly plausible. There do always seem to be some words just waiting to be coined, don’t there?
It is, of course, also possible that both 1895 sources rely on another source not yet found.
Candidate Noobs from the past few months:
Geezer – an American on Quora reported his twenty-something son calling him an (old) geezer.
Grief – used in an American series the wife watches, Chicago Fire I think (causing someone grief, didn’t need the grief, etc).
And I’ve just noticed ‘comfy’ isn’t listed here as a Noob.