List of ethnic group names used as insults
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of nouns, used for name-calling in the English language, whose etymology goes back to the name of some, often historical or archaic, ethnic or religious group, but whose current meaning has lost that connotation and does not imply any actual ethnicity or religion.
Several of these terms are derogatory or insulting. The entries on this list should not be confused with "ethnic slurs" referring to a person's actual ethnicity, which have a separate list.
- Apache
- a person from the Parisian underworld (from the collective name Apache for several nations of Native Americans)
- Bohemian
- a person with an unconventional artistic lifestyle (originally meaning an inhabitant of Bohemia; the secondary meaning may derive from an erroneous idea that the Roma people originate from Bohemia)
- Bugger
- Synonymous with "sodomite" (see below) (from Middle English bougre, heretic, from Anglo-French bugre, from Medieval Latin Bulgarus, literally, Bulgarian; from the association of Bulgaria with the Bogomils, who were accused of sodomy. Source: Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary; see Bulgarian (slang))
- Cannibal
- used descriptively for any human consuming human flesh (originally meaning Carib, erroneously thought to be cannibals)
- Gyp
- a swindler; a racehorse owner; in Britain also a male servant at a college — from Gypsy, which in turn is derived from Egyptian) [1][2]
- Cretin
- a person of severely diminished mental capabilities (possibly from Alpine French dialect, originally meaning Christian)
- Goth
- a crude person, lacking culture or refinement; a somewhat obsolete term, in this sense not in reference to the Goth subculture (from the East Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 410)
- Hun
- barbarous or destructive person; was also in used in World War I as an ethnic slur for the Germans (from the confederation of Eurasian tribes that first appeared in Europe in the 4th century, leading to mass migrations of Germanic tribes westward, and established an empire extending into Europe in the 5th century, partially financed by the plundering of wealthy Roman cities)
- Philistine
- a person who does not care about artistic and cultural values (from a people that inhabited Canaan when, according to the biblical account, the Israelites arrived)
- Pygmy
- a person of diminished stature (possibly in reference to certain hunter-gatherer peoples, such as the Mbuti of Central Africa, sometimes grouped together under the term Pygmies, but that designation actually stems from the original meaning of pygmy as an unusually small person)
- Sodomite
- a homosexual, in particular a male engaging in anal sex with another male (from the inhabitants of the biblical city of Sodom, proclaimed to be given to "committing abomination")
- Tartar
- a violently ferocious person, a rather obsolete term (from the Mongolian nomadic tribe of Tatars that invaded Europe in the 13th century, later generalized to any Mongolian or Turkic invaders of Europe)
- Thug
- a gangster or ruffian ready to use excessive violence (from the religious Indian Thuggee cult, alleged to practice robbery and murder by strangulation)
- Vandal
- a person who willfully and maliciously destroys property (from the East Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 455)
