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Visitor said:
Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly panel comic that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1950.
He first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, the series also had a dog that looked much like the early 1950s version of Snoopy.
In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post; seventeen single-panel cartoons by Schulz would be published there. The first of these was of a boy who resembled Charlie Brown sitting with his feet on an ottoman.
When his work was picked up by United Features Syndicate, they decided to run the new comic strip he had been working on. This strip was similar in spirit to the panel comic, but it had a set cast of characters, rather than different nameless little folk for each page.
The name Li'l Folks was too close to the names of two other comics of the time. To avoid confusion, the name Peanuts, was chosen for Schulz's comic.
Peanuts was a title Schulz always disliked. In a 1987 interview, Schulz said of the title Peanuts: "It's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity — and I think my humor has dignity."
The periodic collections of the strips in paperback book form typically had either "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy" in the title, not "Peanuts", because of Schulz's distaste for his strip's title.
The Sunday panels eventually typically read, Peanuts, featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown.
And of course... here is the first comic of Peanuts from October 2, 1950:
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