The story
Home in this saying is not a house. It is wherever your people are, and wherever you feel you belong. It is a gentle comfort for anyone who has moved far from where they started.
No one knows for sure who said it first. Some popular sources credit the thought to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, nearly two thousand years ago. Writers that old did express a similar idea, but no one has pinned these words on him.
The wording we use seems to be American. In 1829, a short poem ran in several US newspapers, including The Fayetteville Weekly Observer. It opens: “’Tis home where e’er the heart is, / Where e’er its loved ones dwell.” The phrase historian Gary Martin calls the poem “virtually doggerel,” but says it has a good claim to be the source.
By 1857 the words had settled into their modern order. In J. T. Bickford’s novel Scandal, a character says, “Home is where the heart is, Katie.” From there the line grew into one of the best-loved sayings in English, proof that a plain little verse can outlive many fine ones.
