ANSWER
Short answer - it was named by Edwin Lowe, after a tongue-tied player shouted out "Bingo!", when what she really meant to shout was "Beano!"
As mentioned last week, the modern game of Bingo can trace its origin to the first modern lottery, the "Guioco del Lotto", which began in Italy in 1530. Lotto quickly spread to other European countries including France, England, and of particular interest to us here, Germany. By the late 1920's a bingo-like carnival game called "Lotto" had become very popular in Germany. There it was discovered by an enterprising American carny, who brought it back to the states with him, with a few minor changes, as a game called "Beano". Beano was very much like Bingo, except that dried beans were placed on the cards to mark where a number had been called. When a contestant lined up five beans in a row they were to yell "Beano!" to indicate that they had won. In short time Beano became as popular in the US as its predecessor had been in Germany.
It was just after the stock market crash 1929, when toy salesman and budding entrepreneur Edwin Lowe was travelling the country, looking for new ideas. One of the places he visited was a local carnival in Georgia, where he discovered the game of Beano. He was particularly impressed with how popular it seemed to be among the local clientele. When he returned to his home in New York, he invited friends to his apartment to stage his own games of beano, to test whether he could recreate the excitement he had observed at the carnival. He could. It was at one of these sessions that a player became so excited at winning that when she tried to shout "Beano!" it came out "Bingo!". At that moment Lowe new instantly what the name of his new game would be.
WHO GOT IT RIGHT: Bob Milligan, and Marc Quinlivan.
