The template predates the name. The 1806 Balance and Columbian Repository defined a ‘cock-tail’ as spirits, sugar, water and bitters — this drink, exactly. By the 1880s drinkers asking for that original build against a wave of newer, more elaborate mixtures were ordering it ‘the old-fashioned way.’ The Pendennis Club in Louisville is the most repeated origin story, but the documentary evidence for it is thin and the drink was almost certainly in circulation first.