How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood!

What is the origin of this tongue-twister and what exactly is meant by woodchuck here?

Details:

Woodchuck is used as an alternative name for groundhogs.

The etymology of woodchuck suggests that the word is not related with "wood" and "chucking" and I think the tongue twister touches on this in a humorous way because woodchucks cannot chuck wood actually. (Can they?)

From Etymonline:

woodchuck (n.) 1670s, alteration (influenced by wood (n.)) of Cree (Algonquian) otchek or Ojibwa otchig, "marten," the name subsequently transferred to the groundhog.

How did this word emerge (alteration because of similar sounding words?) and how did it end up in this tongue twister?

How is the name transferred to the groundhog?

Solution 1:

"Woodchuck" is a name for a marmot, Marmota monax, also known as a groundhog. The name comes from a native American (Algonquian or possibly Narragansett) wuchak.

Wikipedia says the tongue-twister comes from a 1902 song, but the song is really from 1903. It was however a nonsense verse published in a children's magazine in 1902 or earlier.

Wikipedia: "The Woodchuck Song" (1902?)

Wikipedia says:

The origin of the phrase is a 1902 song, "The Woodchuck Song", written by Robert Howard Davis for Fay Templeton in musical The Runaways.[ 7 ][ 8 ]

The references are:

7. The Tammany Times - Volumes 20-21 1902- Page 305 ""How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, If a woodchuck would chuck wood?" That is the beginning of the refrain of a song that Mr. Robert Howard Davis has written for Fay Templeton in “The Runaways.” Miss Templeton is trying the song ...

8. Hobbies - Volume 78, Issues 1-6 - Page 119 Otto C. Lightner, Pearl Ann Reeder - 1973 "Mathias quotes Davis as saying he made $20,000 from the sale of "The Woodchuck Song" (this must have been from sheet music, for royalties were not paid on record sales in those days) after he and Morse called at Fay Templeton's home .."

I looked up the first one. The 1902 probably via a Google Books snippet, but it cannot be verified. Here's the relevant part from the more reliable HathiTrust:

Scrolling back three pages, we see the this edition (Vol. XXI No. 25) of The Tammany Times was published in October 17th, 1903, not 1902. The book contains many issues, the first of which was 1902, hence the mistake at Wikipedia. The article tells us:

The musical production opened for a run of indefinite length about the first of last May, bringing the two hundredth performance at the Casino last Wednesday, ...

And:

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, If a woodchuck would chuck wood?"

That is the beginning of the refrain of a song that Mr. Robert Howard Davis has written for Fay Templeton in “The Runaways.” Miss Templeton is trying the song on Casino audiences the latter half of this week, and is making it one of the pronounced song successes of the season.

This suggests to me the song is a fairly new addition to the musical.

It's also mentioned in these October 15th and this October 24th, 1903 newspapers, and this from October 24th, 1903:

Fay Templeton has a new song in "The Runaways" that has caught all Broadway. It was written for her by Robert H. Davis, and the two lines which are most widely quoted are the following:

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood."

Wikipedia's second reference also says 1903 and not 1902:

In 1903 Robert Hobart Davis and Theodore F. Morse gave birth to a "classic" which was published under the title of "The Woodchuck Song." It is, however, usually referred to as "How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck If a Woodchuck ...

Chronicling America: The Indianapolis Journal (1902)

So, is there anything earlier? The earliest I found in the Chronicling America newspaper archive is from The Indianapolis Journal, February 09, 1902 (Part two, Page 10, Image 20):

The other day I picked up a children's magazine and found a nonsense verse which ever since has been making life a burden to me. More than that, I have repeated the verse to many of my friends, and they, too, have been sent to the borderland of Insanity. This is the verse:

" 'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he
could chuck
If a woodchuck could chuck wood. "

Solution 2:

About a month older than the instance of "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" from the Indianapolis Journal of February 9, 1902 (cited in Hugo's excellent answer) is this occurrence from a section of the [Clinton New York] Hamilton Literary Magazine (January 1902) devoted to "college verse," attributed to the Penn [University] Chronicle:

CHUCK!

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck

If a woodchuck could chuck wood?

He would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could

If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

About two months older than that is this untitled item from the [San Francisco, California] Pacific Rural Press (October 26, 1901):

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck as much as a woodchuck could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

And 44 days older than that is this instance from a collection of brief items under the heading "Pleasantries" in the [Boston, Massachusetts] Christian Register (September 12, 1901):

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck as much as a woodchuck could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

The woodchuck's confirmed trail thus runs from Massachusetts in September 1901 to California in October 1901 to New York (by way of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in January 1902 to Indiana in February 1902. That is one peripatetic (and fast) rodent!

Solution 3:

As you said in your question, the woodchuck is a groundhog, used in the tongue twister because of its name rather than for any wood chucking ability.

The tongue twister came from a 1902 song 'The Woodchuck Song' by Robert Howard Davis.

According to this article in the Spokane Chronicle from 1988, "Woodchucks can't chuck wood, but they do 'toss or discard' dirt when they are digging a burrow.

From this, Richard Thomas, fish and wildlife technician for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, extrapolated that a woodchuck could chuck "about 700 pounds on a good day with the wind at his back."

However, Paskevich and Shea "The ability of woodchucks to chuck cellulose fibers" Annals of Improbable Research, 1995 states that a woodchuck would "chuck 361.9237001 cubic centrimeters of wood per day, which is the wood that a woodchuck COULD chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood."