The University of Mississippi is facing a fight over its very identity.

Like other universities, the state's flagship campus in Oxford is not generally addressed by its full name. For more than a century, it's been called Ole Miss. It sounds like folksy shorthand for Old Mississippi.

The term's actual origin is more unsettling.

In 1896, a fraternity-backed council asked students to name the new school yearbook. Student Elma Meek proffered Ole Miss.

She borrowed it from the vernacular of the antebellum "darkey," who used it as a term of reverence for the slave master's wife, Meek told the university newspaper in 1937.

The story, which explains how the term became "the valued possession" of the university at large, ran under the headline: "Ole Miss takes its name from darky dialect, not abbreviation of state."

Plenty of students and alum say the name has evolved to embody all that's good about the northwest Mississippi school and its traditions. Others -- including many Black students, who make up 12.5% of the student body in a state where African Americans compose triple that percentage of the population -- point to Meek's words and ask: How could Ole Miss mean something else?

"I had often heard old 'darkies' on Southern plantations address the lady in the 'big house' as 'Ole Miss,'" Meek told the school paper 40 years after the term's advent. "I have never thought much about the matter, for I never dreamed, of course, that the term would grow into such popularity and favor."

She felt the term was a tribute to Southern women, the paper reported.

'We will continue to use the terms'

To be clear, this isn't breaking news. The Ole Miss origin story is an open secret. Two sources, with something less than conviction, offered an alternate theory -- about a train that ran from Memphis to New Orleans -- but the tale doesn't withstand academic or journalistic rigor.

On its own website, the university explains Elma Meek Hall, which houses the art department, is named for "the student who submitted the name Ole Miss for the name of the annual yearbook; Ole Miss subsequently became synonymous with the University of Mississippi." A cached version of a 2013 university yearbook webpage also credits Meek.

The university declined CNN's requests to discuss the matter with the chancellor or provost, saying, "Our leadership is absorbed with Covid-19 planning as we prepare to resume on-campus operations safely."

In 2016, then-Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter tamped down concern about the university retiring Ole Miss or its mascot, the Rebels, saying the university would continue to use them because they're popular and have taken on new meanings. A Rebel was no longer a Confederate; she or he was now "someone who bucks the status quo," he wrote.

"I can assure you that we will continue to use the terms Ole Miss and Rebels as endearing nicknames for the university," Vitter wrote.

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