When did Winnie-the-Pooh first appear by name in a published story?

Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a published story on 24 December 1925.

The story was commissioned for the Christmas Eve edition of London’s Evening News. It introduced the character before the first book collection, Winnie-the-Pooh, was published in October 1926.

The name combined two inspirations from Christopher Robin Milne’s childhood. “Winnie” came from Winnipeg, a female black bear Christopher Robin visited at London Zoo, while “Pooh” came from a swan encountered by the family. Christopher Robin had originally called his teddy bear Edward Bear.

This date is easy to confuse with the 1926 publication of the first book. The Christmas story was an early appearance, not the release of the famous story collection. It helped establish the character in the public imagination before Milne and Shepard’s book expanded the cast and the setting.