He was the first aristocrat, and their naming rights took precedence over those of commoners.

Absolutely.

But also, you've got me thinking, sausages are pretty old. Romans had them. They also had mustard, rolls and flatbreads. A Roman could have watched a chariot race while eating, essentially, a hot dog in the stands. Maybe even a beer too, if they liked Egyptian imports.

We know he wasn't, and that is not really the history of it either, although most people seems to think it is.

The concept of two slices of bread with something (mostly protein) inside them goes as far back as bread does. But it was mostly used by working people who needed a portable meal that didn't easily spoil. So in the time of the Earl of Sandwich it was farm hands, shepards and so on.

He just used that method and made it fashionable amongst the wealthy, and then it trickled back down to the middle classes, who now saw it is a socially acceptable form of meal.

Things titled people do are written down, so there's a record.

Probably, people had done this for centuries--as long as there's been bread--and it had different names, and no one thought anything about it. It wasn't important enough to write down until an Earl did it, and needed his ego stroked over it.

Of course not, he's just the first person known to popularize it, and it's well known that he didn't even come up with the idea. He was famished after a long session of gambling and told his cook to bring him something quick to make and easy to eat. So the cook slapped something between two slices of bread and shoved it in front of him.

Nice try, Duke of hand pastries

Tell it to the Earl of Grey.

He might have been the first person to CALL IT a sandwich tho.

Indeed, there's an Asian sandwich from 200 BC. Also known as The Chinese Hamburger

No but he was the one who started the current lineage that exists today.

Can you first define what a sandwich is?

the earl the earl of taco invented the taco.