Ivy League originally refers to the sports league composed of eight universities in the northeastern United States, and later refers to the university league composed of seven universities and a college, and still uses the name of "Ivy League".
There were only four universities in the early Ivy League: Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton. The Roman numeral 4 is "IV", and the suffix Y becomes "IVY", which means Ivy in English, so it is also called an Ivy League school. Later, the alliance of these four universities expanded to eight and became a prestigious Ivy League school.
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There are two theories about the origin of the name "Ivy League".
According to the first theory, the original name of "Ivy League" should be traced back to 1937, which was coined by Mr. Stanley Woodward, a sports reporter of the New York Herald Tribune, because the oldest and most elite school buildings in the United States are covered with ivy.
According to the second theory, it comes from an earlier sports association called "Four Leagues", whose members include Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University. While maintaining the academic tradition, the "quadruple" was written as the "quadruple" of Roman numerals. When reading English letters, "Ⅳ" and "Ivy" are pronounced the same.