how did the 10 gallon hat come to be called the 10 gallon hat?

Answer 1

So here is la pura verdad: "Ten-gallon hat" is the result of a linguistic mix-up. "Galón" is the Spanish word for "braid." Some vaqueros wore as many as ten braided hatbands on their sombreros, and those were called "ten galón hats." English speakers heard gallon. Real cowboy hats came to Texas from the Spanish via Mexico (unless you want to go all the way back to Genghis Khan and the Mongolian horsemen, who apparently wore something similar).

Stewart, who runs a hat store in my town, showed me an astonishing array of cowboy hats varying in brim size and bend, top creases and crown size. The biggest ones are 7 inches high, and--sorry, Stewart--they are way goofy-looking. About the only guys I could see wearing these would be those nerds who re-enact gunfights in Old Town. Stewart wouldn't let me pour water into a hat, so we used anasazi pinto beans to discover that the largest-crowned cowboy hat would carry less than 4 gallons. Stewart says the tall-crowned hats became popular when movie stars of B-Westerns in the 20s and 30s wore them to make themselves look taller (Tom Mix was only 5'6").

Answer 2

A ten gallon hat is often thought to be large enough to hold ten gallons of water. This is not true (unless you have an exceptionally large head). The gallon in "ten gallon hat" derives from the Spanish galón meaning braid. So a ten-gallon hat is a hat with a braiding around the brim.
A ten-gallon hat holds 3/4 gallon or 3 quarts.

Answer 3

A ten-gallon hat is a type of cowboy hat. The name came about because of a linguistic misunderstanding. Cowboy hats arrived in Texas via Mexico, with Mexican vaqueros who wore hats decorated with galloon (narrow braided trimming) around the crown. The Spanish word for "galloon" is "galón." Texas cowboys misunderstood the word "galón" for "gallon," and a false legend was born. In fact, a ten-gallon hat holds less than a gallon, and if it were to actually hold 10 gallons, it'd be the size of a bathtub.

Answer 4

I think its something to do with the amount of water it can hold - a cowboy would use his hat to gather water to drink.
Probably wrong as 10 gallons is a bloody huge hat!