Alternative words for British

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. Historically "British" implied a connection with the British Isles rather than with the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. 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. Though there is often a misunderstanding on the British behalf when called Pommy by an Australian; as 'Pommy' is widely known as 'Prisoners of Her Majesty's Service'

Slang

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 in the 19th century. The term is derogatory in the sense that the British would be allegedly more preoccupied with the savings of limes over lemons which were traditionally used to prevent scurvy. The term is thought to have originated in the Caribbean in the 1880s. A false etymology is that it is a derivative of "Corr-blimey" ("God blind me!").

The term Limey evolved into a verb "to lime" which means to hang out. The British sailors "Limeys" would hang out in the urban areas when off-duty and patronise the local prostitutes. This has been immortalized in the old calypso "Jean and Dinah" by the Mighty Sparrow in 1956.

Pommy

The term pommy or pommie 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.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) strongly supports the theory that pom and pommy originated as contractions of "pomegranate", Australian rhyming slang for immigrant. The OED cites a well-known Australian weekly, The Bulletin, which on 14 November 1912 reported: "The other day a Pummy Grant (assisted immigrant) was handed a bridle and told to catch a horse."^[1]

A commonly-heard alternative theory is that POM originated as an acronym for "prisoner of His/Her Majesty" (POHM) or "prisoner of mother England" (POME). As many of Australia's first settlers were British convicts, sentenced to transportation to Australia, this theory holds that upon arrival in the country they would be given a uniform with "POHM" or "POME" emblazoned on the back. There is no evidence that this ever happened. Another version is that it stood for "prisoner of Millbank", Millbank being the quayside in London where prisoners were held prior to transportation. And yet another version why, specifically Australians, call British "POME" - Prisoner Of Mother England. While Australia was being used as a prison, the prisoners called the British "POME" because the prisoners said that the British were captives in England due to the monarch rule, bad weather and class system. This stuck after Australia was no longer used as a prison as most of the prisoners were released in Australia and were free to do what ever they pleased. In New Zealand one meaning is "Prisoners of Mother England", meaning people who while they have moved from Britain to colonies but still refer and compare everything to, and inferior of its equivalent in England; another form is referring to Australian lowly arrivals as "Prisoners of His/Her Majesty" in comparison to New Zealander's superior method of arriving as settlers.

Another theory is that it is rhyming slang for tommy, international slang for a British soldier.

Another suggestion relates to the fact that POM is also used an acronym for "Port of Melbourne". However, the term "pommy" was coined long before the acronym was in common parlance.

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. 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.^[2]

Rosbif/Rosbeef

In French the term rosbif refers to the idea that the British staple meat is roast beef, and that it is the only dish British cooks can prepare.^[3] 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.

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).

Tea Bags

In Switzerland the term Tea Bags is used at least in the German speaking regions to refer to Britons. This is due to the perceived propensity of British people to drink tea. ^{[citation needed]}

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-Saxons 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 more 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 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.

Another 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.

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.

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). 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.

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.

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 red-coloured coats in their typical military dress. The term was first recorded in the 1880s in the writings of Rudyard Kipling, although it is often erroneously assumed to have been used earlier.^{[citation needed]}

Five O'Clocks

In Poland, the British people are often called "Five O'Clocks" (Fajfokloki in Polish) as a reference to the legendary Five O'Clock Tea.

Proposed alternatives

The use of alternative terms has been practised and advocated by some people to distinguish UK nationals from people living specifically in Great Britain or the British Isles. In practice, this is not usually necessary since British without any modifier (like British cooking) is generally understood to refer to the UK. However, other uses, as in British English, can be taken as referring to the British Isles in their entirety.

Other languages

In many languages, the equivalent terms for 'English' and 'England' are often used interchangeably with 'British' and 'Britain' (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 ('Britanya' is Britain in Turkish). Welsh people in particular are very often referred to in French as 'anglais', in Russian as 'англичанин' (angličanin), and so on. The same occurs rather less frequently in the case of individuals from Scotland and Northern Ireland (perhaps because Wales, although retaining its own language and culture, was formally annexed by England during the Middle Ages while 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), although their countries may still 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.

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)^{[citation needed]} 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 referred to as firangis/pirangis (aliens) or goras (literally "Whiteman" in Hindi).

Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese use terms for Britain/British which are clearly based on "England/English".

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 have both the meaning of "England/English" and "Britain/British" (including both Great Britain and UK). There are also more formal specific names for the UK, such as the Chinese Liánhéwángguó literally meaning "United Kingdom". Chinese also have words for "Scotland" (sūgèlán), Wales (weiersi) and Northern Ireland (beiai) but generally most Chinese people are not aware how these names are used in the UK.

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 is disregarded, the second is 国 (guo) which means country/state/kingdom. The Japanese word '英国' Eikoku was from Chinese. In Japanese, pronunciation of the character '英' is "ei" (Kana:えい） and pronunciation of the Character '国' is "koku" (Kana:こく）. Both are Onyomi (Kanji:音読み) readings of the Chinese characters "英国". Nowadays the Japanese usually use the word Igirisu (イギリス)　and seldom use the word Eikoku (英国).

The transliterations: Chinese Yīnggèlán (英格兰), Japanese Igirisu (Kana : イギリス) (via Portuguese), Korean Yeonggilli (Hangul: 영길리) (less used in Korea today) are also all derived from "England", but all also mean both "Britain/British" and "England/English". (see also イギリス【英吉利】, えいこく【英国】).^[4] Additionally, Vietnamese đảo Anh (島英; literally, "English island") means the island of Great Britain.

References

See also

• British Isles (terminology)
• Offensive terms per nationality

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