Why "Hot Dog"?

Lore has it that in 1900 sports cartoonist Thomas Aloysius “Tad” Dorgan… dubbed his bunned lunch “hot dog.” His subsequent caricature of a dachshund on a bun got the goat of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, which instituted a policy of banning the term “hot dog” by concessionaires — insisting instead on the use of PC terms such as “Coney Islands,” “red hots” or “frankfurters.”… There are, however, some problems with this account.… The first printed references to “hot dog” occur in the 1890s…