trek / Trekkie / Trekker

Trekker and Trekkie mean the same thing, but have different connotations. Both refer to fans of the science fiction television show, and now movie franchise, Star Trek, which started airing on American television in 1966. The two terms are sometimes differentiated, however, in that a Trekker is a more serious and studious fan.

The word trek comes from the Dutch, meaning to pull or to journey, that is originally by horse-or ox-drawn wagon, or a noun meaning an act of pulling a wagon or taking such a journey. It comes into English via South Africa, with its mix of British and Dutch settler-colonists.

The earliest written appearances in English demonstrate a lack of familiarity with Dutch in that the word is spelled with an <a>. It appears in a 22 November 1820 letter by Thomas Philipps, one of the original British settler-colonists to the Cape Colony in 1820, as a command given to a draft animal to begin pulling:

A Dutchman never seems in a hurry, he carries his Mutton and dried beef and bread and his blanket in a large chest on which he sits to drive, and with his pipe jogs on contentedly, now and then calling out “Trac, Trac.”

And John Mitford Bowker, another early English settler-colonist, uses the verb in his journal of 25 September 1835 meaning to travel:

Making ready for to track have got no horses.

And we see the <e> spelling when Bowker uses the noun in a letter dated 7 May 1846:

We, all of us, have been sick more or less, for it is one thing to look to your concerns at home, and another to try to look to them in the camp, and also to do patrol duty by day and sentry duty at night. But enough of this. Here we are on trek; for with Skietkloof at our backs we could keep nothing.

And we see the verb with the <e> spelling in R. Gordon Cumming’s 1850 A Hunter’s Life in South Africa:

From time immemorial , these interesting and stupendous quadrupeds had maintained their ground throughout these their paternal domains, although they were constantly hunted, and numbers of them were slain, by the neighbouring active and athletic warriors of the Amaponda tribes, on account of their flesh—the ivory so much prized amongst civilized nations being by them esteemed of no value, the only purpose to which they adapt it being the manufacture of rings and ornaments for their fingers and arms. These gallant fellows, armed only with their assegais or light javelins of their own manufacture, were in the constant habit of attacking the gigantic animals, and overpowering them with the accumulated showers of their weapons. At length, however, when the white lords of the creation pitched their camps on the shores of Southern Africa, a more determined and general warfare was waged against the elephants on account of their ivory, with the more destructive engines of ball and powder. In a few years, those who managed to escape from the hands of their oppressors, after wandering from forest to forest, and from one mountain-range to another, and finding that sanctuary there was none, turned their faces to the north-east, and “trekked” or migrated from their ancestral jungles to lands unknown.

Jump forward a century or so, and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek aired its first episode on 8 September 1966. Trekker appears five months later in a headline assigned to a letter in TV Guide of 22 February 1967:

TREKKER

This is an appeal to the public to stand behind the only intellectually stimulating program NBC has come up with in years. Star Trek at least rises above the typical “father is a slob, mother is a scatterbrain, and the children triumph” programs that fill the prime time every night.

And a group of fans of the TV series from Trenton, New Jersey wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer, a portion of the letter appearing in the 5 April 1967 issue:

From “Trenton Trekkers”: “Thanks for your interview with William Shatner. As avid fans of “Star Trek,” we hope that you will write about our favorite, Leonard Nimoy, the magnificent Mr. Spock.”

Trekkie appears the following year in the fanzine Plak-Tow #8, dated June 1698, in a piece gushing about actor Mark Lenard, who played a Romulan commander and Spock’s father, Sarek, in the series:

I don't know about other people, but I'm afraid I was acting out of snobbery in cataloguing the roles I'd soon Mr. Lenard play when I sent him a fan letter—I'd wanted to make it clear I wasn't just a trekkie in love with Spock and therefore with all things Vulcan, especially Spock's father, but rather a sophisticated, mature admirer of good acting wherever it appears. Which I hope is true—but I'm in love with Sarek anyway.

And

His great, warm brown eyes are guaranteed to melt any trekkie into a helpless pool of protoplasm.

The distinction between Trekker and Trekkie dates to at least 1970, when it appears in the fanzine Deck 6:

If you object to opinions expressed or statements made in DECK 6, please don’t blame the “Deck 6 gang.” With the exception of issue #1 (which was written by Ellen), I’m responsible. Any contributions by the rest of the gang will be so labeled, so if you’re planning to hit anyone, better aim at me. The gang is a definite help, though—they keep my spirits up, and beat me down when I start acting like a bubble-headed trekkie (rather than a sober, dignified—albeit enthusiastic—trekker).

So, when in doubt as to which word to use, go with Trekker. A Trekkie won’t be insulted, but the reverse is not the case.

Sources:

Berman, Ruth and Dorothy Jones. “A Mid-Spring’s Night’s Dream, or, Journey to Backstage.” Plak-Tow, 8, June 1968. Fanlore.org.

Bowker, John Mitford. Letter, 7 May 1846. Speeches, Letters, and Selections from Important Papers. Grahamstown, South Africa: Godlonton and Richards, 1864, 222. Google Books.

Cumming, R. Gordon. A Hunter’s Life in South Africa, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1850, 47–48. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford University Press, 1996, s.v. trek, n.

Harris, Harry. “AFTRA Strike Riles Viewer.” Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania), 5 April 1967, 17/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, s.v. trekker, n. (21 November 2023), trekkie, n. (27 November 2023).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trek, n., trek, v., trekkie, n., addition 2019, s.v. trekker, n.

Philipps, Thomas. Philipps, 1820 Settler: His Letters. Arthur Keppel-Jones, ed. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1960, 74.

Pruitt, Carol. Deck 6, #8, May 1970. Fanlore.org.

TV Guide, 22 February 1967, A-72. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Pat Loika, 2013. Flickr.com. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.