Where did the term wop come from?

Answer 1

Wop is an English transliteration of the common Neapolitan dialect term "Guap" meaning "handsome." Its use is often intentionally ironic, and is used much more frequently by men than by women. Pronounced "wop," this term is still in common causal use today by rural southern Italians who neither emigrated to the US nor at any time had any contact with U.S. Immigration Officials, a fact which discredits the popular notion that "wop" is derived from "without papers."

Dominated by Spanish-speaking Bourbons in the 18th century, Naples and much of southern Italy absorbed numerous Spanish terms into local dialects. "Guap" is a clipping of the Spanish word for "handsome" which is "guapo." It was brought by southern Italian immigrants to the United States, particularly to the New York area, by young Italian men who used it either with brotherly irony when hailing their often dishelved compatriots, or as a friendly term of encouragement. Similarly, ironic use of the term "hey handsome" in English used to be common among young American men when greeting friends who looked anything but handsome, sometimes due to a heavy hangover or to the typical romantic or financial disappointments of their age group.

The oftentold and somewhat farfetched misinterpretation of "wop" is that WOP stands for "Without Papers" and was specifically directed at turn of the century (early 1900`s) Italian immigrants who came to Ellis Island in New York Harbor which at the time was designated as the Nation's Immigration Station a U.S. Federal run entity that determined who would be allowed to legally immigrate into the United States of America.

Immigrants who did not have correct immigration documentation paperwork or no immigration paperwork at all..........had "WOP" written in large white letters on the back of their clothing (usually a wool coat) by U.S Immigration Officials so that these individuals could be easily identified. These individuals were not allowed to enter the mainland (New York) and were held against their will at Ellis Island until they were deported back to their country of origin.

The "without papers" theory for the origin of the term speculates that being that most of these individuals spoke little or no English made it easy for U.S. Immigration Officials to use a "written designation" such as "WOP" on these individuals` backs and deport these people who really didn't understand what was about to happen to them. The vast majority of immigrants had papers, and were not permitted to book passage from Europe without documents, since the steamship lines did not want unpaid passengers returning from the U.S.

The term "wop" is also used among Italian immigrants in Argentina, a nation to which more southern Italians emigrated than to the U.S. during the 20th Century. Interestingly, the term "wop" is not common among Italians in San Francisco and nearby parts of California, who tended to originate from central and northern Italian provinces which were never controlled by a Spanish-speaking nobility. Immigrants from such central and northern towns as Lucca, Lodi, and Torino brought their own dialects of course but these did not include the term "guap."