Alternative words for British

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

This article or section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (February 2008)

There are many alternative ways to describe the people of the United Kingdom (UK), though the official designated nationality is British. The standard noun is Briton (see also demonym), but in colloquial usage this is often abbreviated informally to Brit. In practice, Britons are often referred to, according to their constituent nation, as English, Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish. Some other terms are humorous or derogatory slang, and used mainly by people from other countries, although British people themselves may use them in a self-deprecating way. Other terms are serious or tongue-in-cheek attempts to coin words as alternatives to the potentially ambiguous standard terms. British (English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh combined) people may consider some if not all irreverent terms to be offensive, or in some cases even racist.

[edit] Slang

[edit] Limey

Limey is an old American and Canadian slang nickname for the British, originally referring to British sailors. The term is believed to derive from lime-juicer, referring to the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy practice of supplying lime juice to British sailors to prevent scurvy. The benefits of citrus juice were well known at the time thanks to the acute observations of surgeon James Lind who noticed that the cabbage eating Dutch had fewer problems with scurvy. Limes were used over lemons due to limes being more readily available from Britain's own Caribbean colonies. The term is thought to have originated in the Caribbean in the 1880s. A false etymology is that it is a derivative of "Cor blimey" ("God blind me!").

[edit] Pommy

The term pommy or pom is commonly used by speakers of Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English and Afrikaans. It is often shortened to pom. The origin of this term is not confirmed and there are several persistent false etymologies, most being backronyms, an example of which would be P.O.M.E, Prisoner Of Mother England.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) strongly supports the theory that pommy originated as a contraction of "pomegranate".^[1] The OED also suggests that the reason for this is that pomegranate is extinct Australian rhyming slang for immigrant; it cites an article from 14 November 1912, in a once-prominent Australian weekly magazine The Bulletin: "The other day a Pummy Grant (assisted immigrant) was handed a bridle and told to catch a horse." A popular alternative explanation for the theory that pommy is a contraction of "pomegranate", relates to the purported frequency of sunburn among British people in Australia, turning their fair skin as the colour of pomegranates.^[2] However, there is no hard evidence for the theory regarding sunburn.

A false etymology (or "backronym") common in both Australia and New Zealand is that pom originated as an acronym for "prisoner of (his/her) majesty" or "prisoner of mother England". Although many of the first British settlers in Australia were convicts sentenced to transportation to Australia, there is no evidence for this. Some proponents of this theory claim that upon arrival in the country they would be given a uniform with "POHM" or "POME" emblazoned on the back, which apparently stood for Prisoners Of Her Majesty but there are no images or examples of these uniforms.In addition, it is used to mean 'Product of Mother England'.

Other etymologies which are unsupported by evidence include:

• "prisoner of Millbank", after the area of London where prisoners were held prior to transportation;
• it is rhyming slang for tommy, international slang for a British soldier;
• an acronym for "Port of Melbourne". However, the term "pommy" was coined long before POM was used as acronym for the port.
• comes from "pomme", French for apple. The joke was that the pale British would turn red, like an apple, with sunburn when they landed in Australia. This is related to the "pomegranate" theory, the old French words for pomegranate being "pomme grenade". Also, some suggest that England were well known for growing apples, and thus the name "pommy" from "pomme" sufficed.

Use of the word "pom" remains slightly contentious. Some British people living in Australasia find the term offensive and demeaning, others find it harmless and amusing. Attitudes to the use of the word have varied over the years. In the 1960s, slogans such as "bash a pom a day" were heard on New Zealand radio. In Australia, it was frequently employed in the contemptuous phrase pommy bastard up until about the 1970s, when the wave of postwar British immigration to Australia began to decline; although the phrase is still heard nowadays it is often used in a more jovial way. The word has become so common that few Australians and New Zealanders see any reason to avoid using it, some even justifying the use of it as a "term of endearment". In December 2006, the Advertising Standards Board of Australia unanimously ruled that the word "pom" was a part of the Australian vernacular, and was largely used in a "playful or affectionate" sense. As a consequence, the board ruled that the word did not constitute a racial slur, and could be freely used in advertising. The Board was responding to a complaint filed by a community group called British People Against Racial Discrimination.^[3]

[edit] Rosbif/Rosbeef

In French the term rosbif originally referred to English style of cooking roast beef.^[4] During the Hundred Years War the French took to calling the English les goddams because of their frequent use of expletives.

In Portugal, the term bife (literally meaning steak, but sounding like beef) is used as a slang term to refer to British individuals. There is a feminine form, bifa, mainly used to refer to British female tourists.

[edit] Rooinek

In South Africa the term 'Pom' may also be used, while Afrikaans speakers use the term rooinek (literally 'red neck', on account of the sunburnt skin on their necks).

[edit] Britisher, Angrez, Angrej, Anggrit, Firang

The term Britisher is still used in India, and to a lesser extent in the United States, but is largely obsolete elsewhere.

Angrez is of Arabic or Persian origin and is also sometimes used to refer to British people. It derives from the French Anglais. Among South Asians, Angrez often has the more general meaning of "white foreigner", although its more specific meaning is Englishman, with Angrezan for an English woman. This is mostly seen as an ethnic, rather than a territorial, term and applied specifically for people of Anglo-Saxon origin. So people of South Asian origin living in England do not usually refer to themselves as Angrez or Angrezan. Replacing the z with j is common practice especially amongst people from the Punjab region, hence it would be Angrej (masculine) and Angrejan (female). Urdu speakers retain the z always.

The word Firang is used in the same sense as Angrez. Firang is derived from the word 'Frank' and arose during the Crusades, when all invading Christians of the Latin Church came to be seen as Franks. Firang is also likely to have come from firangi meaning foreigner. It tends to refer to Europeans and the European diaspora. It could also stem from the colour of the skin, that is Fika Rang, ("light colour"), for lighter complexioned westerners. Such combinations of words occur frequently in Hindi and are called "sandhis". The word Ferengi, derived from Firang, is used in Star Trek to describe a race of rapacious alien traders. It could in this context be considered a somewhat obscure racial slur.

Punjabis use the term Englandi for any other citizen of England, including Asian British people, regardless of that person's ancestral ethnicity.

The word "Gora" is also commonly used amongst South Asians to refer to Britons. Though the term when literally translated means fair skinned, and would apply to all Caucasians it is more often associated with being a reference to Britons. The feminine of the term would be "Gori".

In Thai, the word anggrit (อังกฤษ) is used to described both the English in particular, and the British in general. The terms Scotland and Scot are also used to described the people and country of Scotland.

[edit] John Bull

John Bull was originally a character created by John Arbuthnot in 1712 to satirise the Whig war party. Later in the 18th century, British satirical artists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank contrasted the stout and healthy British cartoon character with scrawny French revolutionary sans-culottes Jacobins. In the 19th century the U.S. cartoonist Thomas Nast also drew the character. The character has tended to be more popular in, and to be more associated with, England than Scotland and Wales. In light of this, creator Arbuthnot provided John Bull with a sister, Peg, to represent the Scots.

[edit] Tommy

The name Tommy for a soldier in the British Army is particularly associated with World War I. German soldiers used the word as general-purpose name, and would call out 'Tommy!' across no-man's land if they wished to speak to a British soldier (the British using 'Fritz!' for the opposite action). 'Joe' has been used similarly to refer to American soldiers. The French, and Commonwealth forces also used the name. Tommy is derived from Tommy Atkins which had been used as a generic name for a soldier for many years (and had been used as an example name on army registration forms). The precise origin is the subject of some debate, but it is known to have been used as early as 1743. Rudyard Kipling published the poem Tommy (part of the Barrack Room Ballads) in 1892 and in 1893 the music hall song Private Tommy Atkins was published with words by Henry Hamilton and music by S. Potter. In 1898 William McGonagall wrote Lines In Praise of Tommy Atkins. The rock-opera Tommy by The Who references the word in the title; the main character's father was a British airman who went missing in action during WWI.

[edit] Brit

Use of the term Brit seems to have become widespread in more recent times. The correct form is actually Briton, yet is rare in colloquial usage. The term 'Brit' was commonly used by nationalist Irish in Northern Ireland, during which time it acquired highly pejorative connotations.

[edit] Redcoat

The term Redcoat is a defunct slang term for a British soldier. This term applied from the mid-17th century to around 1902 when the British Army wore distinctive scarlet tunics in their typical military dress.

[edit] Other languages

In one of the Vindolanda tablets the latin pejorative of Brittunculi (wretched little Britons) [1] is used by (presumably by a Roman official) in a commentary of their particular military tactics.

In many languages, the equivalent terms for 'English' and 'England' are often used interchangeably with 'British' and 'Britain', and this is also relatively common in many non-British varieties of English. For example in Turkish 'İngiltere' is wrongly used for both Britain and England, despite there being a separate word for Britain, 'Britanya'. Welsh people in particular are very often referred to in French as 'anglais' rather than 'gallois', in Russian as 'англичанин' angličanin, and so on. The same occurs rather less frequently in the case of individuals from Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is perhaps because Wales, although retaining its own language and culture, was formally annexed by England during the Middle Ages. Scotland and Ireland remained separate entities until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, when the Kingdom of Great Britain and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland were formed. However, even these countries may still sometimes be considered to form part of Angleterre or the equivalent. In some languages, as in French, forms like britannique ('British') are restricted to more official contexts, and tend to be used for governments rather than for individuals.

In Spain, equivalents of British and English tended previously to be interchangeable. However, growing nationalist and Celtic cultural movements in Spain have led many to acknowledge Scotland and Wales to be different nations, a view that reflects complex Spanish territorial stresses. The distinction is less commonly upheld in Latin America. However, Ireland has always been considered as a different entity, even when it was part of the United Kingdom; this may be due to historical ties between these two Catholic regions.

In Polish the common informal term to describe an Englishman is Anglik, which is probably derived from the vernacular Polish word for the United Kingdom Anglia. A derogatory term for an English man coined in the recent years is Angol; however, due to its negative connotations it is not used in formal writing or by the media.

Sometimes the concepts of "British" and "English" are reversed, even among some English speakers, who think that the use of the terms "English" and "England" are to be avoided, when it is, in fact, their misuse that causes offence. There have been cases, such as in the Finnish press, where the writer has divided "English" into "British" and "Scots". However, this is quite a rare phenomenon.

In India, especially in British India, the British were, and often still are, referred to as firangis/pirangis (aliens) or goras (literally "Whiteman" in Hindi).

Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese use terms for Britain/British which are derived from the words "England" and "English". The Japanese word for Britain has its origins in the Portuguese word for English: Inglês became イギリス Igirisu.

Although the Chinese Yīngguó (Hanzi:英国), Japanese Eikoku (Kanji:英国), Korean Yeongguk (Hangul: 영국), and Vietnamese Anh Quốc are all derived from "Eng-" in England, they are used to mean "Britain" and "British", including both Great Britain and UK. They are still used to mean England in unofficial contexts. There are also more formal specific names for the UK, such as the Chinese 連合王国 Liánhéwángguó literally meaning "United Kingdom". Separate words exist in all of these languages for each of the constituent parts of the UK, including England, although, as elsewhere, there is little awareness of correct usage. However, sport teams are called by their correct name, as can be seen in any World Cup schedule.

The written form of Yīngguó in Chinese is made up of two characters: 英国. The first 英 (ying) is used only for its sound, its meaning disregarded, the second is 国 (guo) which means country/state/kingdom. Originally the word was written as 英吉利 as an approximation of the word English, and is still used to mean England in the Chinese word for the English Channel 英吉利海糞 Yīng jí lì hǎi xiá. The word was given the reading igirisu in Japanese, and the same abbreviation was adopted, 英国 eikoku, taking the first character and using the more usual 'Chinese' reading. These days, the word is usually written using katakana script as イギリス Igirisu, although 英国 Eikoku is still common. ^[5] The first character is also used in the word for the English language, 英語 eigo.^[6] Additionally, Vietnamese đảo Anh (literally, "English island") means the island of Great Britain.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• British Isles (terminology)
• Offensive terms per nationality