s in
Amsterdam, Netherlands Red-light districts are mentioned in the 1882 minutes of a
Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting in the United States. The
Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known appearance of the term "red light district" in print as an 1894 article from the
Sandusky Register, a newspaper in
Sandusky, Ohio. A usage the year prior was in the
Cincinnati Enquirer of
Cincinnati, Ohio. Author Paul Wellman suggests that this and other terms associated with the
American Old West originated in
Dodge City, Kansas, home to a well-known prostitution district during the 19th century, which included the Red Light House saloon. This has not been proven, but the Dodge City use was likely responsible for the term's pervasiveness.{{cite book| access-date = December 5, 2025 '' cover A commonly repeated, though likely spurious,
folk etymology stems from sailors coming back from sea to
Amsterdam (): Women working as prostitutes, deprived of proper hygiene and running fresh water, carrying red lanterns — with their color camouflaging boils, zits, inequalities in the face and on the skin — made clear they were available as women of pleasure. One of the many terms used for a red-light district in
Japanese is , literally meaning "red-line". Japanese police drew a red line on maps to indicate the boundaries of legal red-light districts. In Japanese, the term , literally meaning "blue-line", also exists, indicating an illegal district. In the
United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term "sporting district" became popular for legal red-light districts. Municipal governments typically defined such districts explicitly to contain and regulate prostitution.{{cite book| access-date=December 5, 2025|author=Woolston, Howard Brown ==Other uses==