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.
In fact, while on a cruise in January, Beckham said someone noticed his Y-emblazoned hat and asked him what year he graduated from Yale.
"I'm not a Yale man," he told the man with a chuckle. "I'm a BYU man."
(In the stranger's defense, the school's Ys do look similar, although BYU's Y is a bit wider and thicker with shorter top serifs.)
In fact, when Beckham took a group of students to New York for an internship program years ago, he told them to meet him at the Y.
Half his class ended up at the YMCA, while the other half ended up at the Yale Club with its block Y out front.
YMCA officials explained that their brand redesign after 43 years is designed to increase awareness of their programs aimed at youth development, healthy living and social responsibility.
"We are changing how we talk about ourselves so that people better understand the benefits of engaging with the Y," Kate Coleman, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of YMCA of the USA said on the organization's website.
The nonprofit's new Y is far from the average Times New Roman letter — more of a modern boomerang and triangle-shaped character in an array of colors. Yet, despite the visual distinction, Marie Alleman, BYU alumni chapter chairwoman in Elko, Nev., was a bit concerned to hear that her beloved school's title had been borrowed.
"That's just wrong," she said, only half-joking. "That's what we always called (BYU). We still call it that. It was and always will be to us, 'the Y.' "
E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com