It is called the “Ivy League” because sportswriters in the 1930s started referring to a group of older, traditional Northeastern universities as “ivy colleges” or “ivy-covered” colleges, a nod to the ivy plants growing on their old campus buildings. The name stuck and was later formalized when these schools formed an athletic conference, which was officially organized in the 1940s–1950s as the Ivy League.

Origins of the name

• The word “ivy” reflects a 19th‑century custom at many colleges where students held “ivy planting” ceremonies, so ivy became a symbol of tradition and enduring scholarship on campus.

• In the 1930s, sportswriters used this imagery to label certain long‑established, ivy‑covered universities as “ivy colleges,” and the phrase evolved into “Ivy League.”

From phrase to league

• By the mid‑20th century, these eight universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell) formalized an athletic agreement and conference, which took on the name Ivy League.

• Over time, the athletic term came to be associated not just with sports, but with academic prestige, selectivity, and social influence, so “Ivy League” now primarily signals elite universities rather than just a sports conference.