When asked about the origin of the name "Oz", Baum was quoted as saying, "I have a little cabinet letter file on my desk that is just in front of me. I was thinking and wondering about a title for the story, and had settled on the "Wizard" as part of it. My gaze was caught by the gilt letters on the three drawers of the cabinet. The first was A-G; the next drawer was labeled H-N; and on the last were the letters O-Z. And 'Oz' it at once became." Jack Snow, author of Who's Who in Oz pointed out that Baum thought of his stories as causing readers to exclaiming "Ohs" and "Ahs" of wonder, and the word "Oz" could be pronounced either way. Martin Gardner in The Wizard of Oz mentioned that some unidentified person had pointed out that the land of Uz was where Job lived. Gardner also suggested that Oz may have been a variation of "Boz", the nickname of Charles Dickens, who was one of Baum's favorite authors. Several years later, Martin Gardner offered an interesting observation about the name "Oz". Shifting each letter to the previous letter in alphabetical order (O becomes N, Z becomes Y) produces the abbreviation for New York, the home state of L. Frank Baum. Then, shifting each letter to the next letter in alphabetical order (O becomes P, Z becomes A) produces the abbreviation for Pennsylvania, the home state of Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote the Oz sequels after Baum died.

In The Wizard of Oz Revealed, Samuel Bousky offers another possibility for the origin of the name "Oz". He refers to the biblical image of the "Tree of Life," mentioned in Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. According to Bousky, "the phonetic name of the symbol in ancient Biblical language is Otz Chiim. The first word Otz does mean Tree, but it also means Plan. Final word rather than LIFE, means Living, thus spiritual Plan For Living. The word Otz may also be expressed OZ." [2]

It is interesting to consider the geography of Oz, which is divided into four territories: North, South, East and West. The Wicked Witches rule over the East and West, while good witches rule over the North and South. In the Populist interpretation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the good witches rule over those parts of Oz that correspond with the agrarian regions of the United States (the South and the Midwest), while the wicked witches rule over territories corresponding to regions of the United States where the Populists had little influence (the West and the industrial northeast). Each territory in Oz is associated with a color and characters that reinforce these associations.

The Munchkins
The Munchkins represent the "little people" who have been enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the East. In the Populist allegory, the Wicked Witch of the East represents industrial and banking interests, which were concentrated in the urban centers "back east".

The Winged Monkeys
Littlefield suggests that the Flying Monkeys represent the Indians of the Great Plains. According to Gretchen Ritter, "The story's Flying Monkeys accord to contemporary images of Native Americans who banished from the northern woods and placed under authoritarian rule in the West." [3]

The Winkies
"Beyond the city, the Wicked Witch of the West had enslaved the yellow Winkies, a reference to the imperialist aims of the Republican administration, which had captured the Philippines from Spain and refused to grant them independence." [4]

The Hammerheads
The Hammerheads do not appear in the movie but are in Baum's book. According to Gretchen Ritter, the Hammerheads represent the hard-headed men who perpetuated the regional differences in the United States and kept the people of the South and the people of the North at odds with one another. [5]