The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language (13 page)

And accent changes are unpredictable. In Jamaica they don’t drop their Hs, they pick them up. A Jamaican with a strong accent will
hadd han haitch honto hany
word that begins with a vowel. In New Zealand E has become I, so they have
six
. And though in Britain a
medal
is made of
metal
, in America a
medal
is usually made of substance that’s pronounced
medal
.

These laws are not absolutely consistent; but they’re an awful lot better than you might expect. Also, words change their meaning and get shortened so you can’t just take an English word, apply some transformations to it, and come out with perfect Italian. But all the European languages are closely enough related that for the basic words – like
father
,
eyes
,
heart
– there’s probably a recognisable cousin.

This is particularly amazing when you consider how Europe has been overrun again and again by hordes of barbarians speaking barbarian languages like Frankish.

Frankly, My Dear Frankfurter

Once upon a terribly long time ago, there was a tribe called the Franks. They invaded Gaul and Gaul became
Franc
[k]
e
.

They oppressed the native Gauls horribly, forcing them to eat garlic and listen to Johnny Hallyday records. Only the Franks themselves were free. Thus they were en
franch
ised. They were able to speak freely, or
frankly
, and everybody else was disen
franch
ised and not able to approve things just by
frank
ing them.

How did the Franks get to France? Well, on the way they had to cross the River Main. This was easily done: they found a ford by which to ford it. The place became known as
Frank-ford on the Main
, or Frankfurt am Main.

Frankfurt is now best known as a financial centre, but also gave its name to a kind of low-rent sausage called a
frankfurter
. By the same token, a
hamburger
comes from Hamburg and involves no
ham
(or in the case of many modern hamburgers, no detectable meat at all). Also, a
berliner
is a kind of doughnut from Berlin, which made JFK’s famous remark – ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ – rather amusing to German audiences.

Back in ancient France the big export used to be incense, which therefore became known as
frankincense
, and at least one of the conquering Franks managed to cross the Atlantic still bearing his name of ‘Son of the south freeborn landowner’, which translates to
Benjamin Franklin
.

You may notice a pattern here. Naturally, the Franks named good things like
frankincense
and
speaking frankly
after themselves. It’s an absolute truth of linguistics that bad things are foreign.

Beastly Foreigners

The history of English prejudice is engraved in the English language.

These days the Dutch are considered inoffensive, charming even; but it hasn’t always been so. The Dutch used to be a major naval and trading power just across the North Sea from Britain, and so Holland and Britain were natural and nautical enemies. Even when the two countries weren’t fighting outright battles, the English would subtly undermine their enemies by inventing rude phrases.

Dutch courage
is the courage found at the bottom of a bottle, and a
Dutch feast
is a meal where the host gets drunk before his guests.
Dutch comfort
is no comfort at all. A
Dutch wife
is simply a large pillow (or in gay slang something far more ingenious). A
Dutch reckoning
is a fraudulent price that is raised if you argue about it. A
Dutch widow
is a prostitute. A
Dutch uncle
is unpleasant and stern, and only tight-fisted diners insist on
going Dutch
. That’ll show them.

In 1934 the Dutch government finally noticed all these phrases. They decided that it was too late to change the English language and instead made it a rule that their ambassadors in English-speaking countries only use the term
The Netherlands
.

The Dutch probably invented their own equivalent phrases about the English, but nobody knows what they are, as the Dutch language is
double Dutch
to us. Anyway, the English were too busy thinking up nasty phrases about their other neighbours.

Welsh rarebit
used to be called
Welsh rabbit
, on the basis that when a Welshman promised you something nice to eat like rabbit, you were probably only going to get cheese on toast. The English also used to believe that the Welsh were crazy for cheese.
Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1811) records that:

The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the
janua vita
[gates of life] to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth.

By the same token, a
Welsh carpet
was a pattern painted, or stained, onto a brick floor; a
Welsh diamond
is a rock crystal; and a
Welsh comb
is your fingers.

When they had finished abusing the Welsh, the English phrase-makers turned their fury on the Irish, who made
Irish stew
out of leftovers. In fact, it was decided that the Irish were so nonsensical that nonsense itself was called
Irish
.

Yet the great enemy of England has always been France. We believed the French to be dishonest lechers, which is why a
French letter
is a condom and
French leave
is truancy, although here the French have got their own back by calling the same thing
filer à l’anglais
.

And when the English had got bored with just using the proper names of countries to insult them, they decided to think up nasty names for absolutely everybody.

Pejoratives

Here are some pejorative terms for the European nations and their origins.

Frog
Short for
frog-eater
(1798). Previously (1652) the pejorative for a Dutchman because Holland is so marshy.

Kraut
From the German for
cabbage
. First recorded in 1841, but popularised during the First World War.

Hun
meant
destroyer of beauty
in 1806, long before it became the pejorative for German. That’s because the Huns, like the Vandals, were a tribe who helped to bring down the Roman empire (the actual order was Vandal, Goth, Hun pushing each other from Germany through France to Spain and North Africa). Matthew Arnold called art-haters
Philistines
on the same basis of naming people you don’t like after an ancient tribe. It was Kaiser Wilhelm II who first applied
Hun
to Germans in 1900 when he urged the army he was sending to China to mimic the behaviour of their supposed Hunnish forebears and ‘Take no prisoners’, a phrase that’s usually attributed to him, although someone had doubtless said something like it before (‘I’ll be back’ is similarly attributed to the film
Terminator
). The word was taken up as a pejorative during the world wars as, though the Germans imagined their ancestors to be raffish and rugged, the British thought them beastly.

Wop
(1912) American term, from Neapolitan dialect
guappo
, meaning
dandy
or
gigolo
.

Dago
(1823) From
Diego
(obviously). Originally for either Spanish or Portuguese sailors.

Spic
(1913) American term for anyone in the slightest bit Hispanic. Derives from ‘No
speak
English’. Or maybe from
spaghetti
via
spiggoty
(1910).

However, language and history have been cruellest to the Slavs of Eastern Europe. Slavs such as the Bulgars spent many years battling against their neighbours. They weren’t always successful. That there was a Byzantine emperor nicknamed Basil the Bulgar Slayer ought to give you some idea of what happened.

Basil the Bulgar Slayer once captured 15,000 Bulgars and blinded 99 per cent of them. Every hundredth Bulgar was left with one eye so that he could lead his 99 comrades home. Byzantine historians call this a clever tactic, but to our more modern minds it looks plain damned rude.

Basically, the Slavs had a hard time of it. When they weren’t being slain by Basil in the south they were being subjugated by the Holy Roman Empire in the north and forced into lives of servitude. So many Slavs were defeated and oppressed that the word
Slav
itself became interchangeable with
forced labourer
, and that’s where we got the word
slave
.

Now, before the next chapter, which common valediction surrenders you to a life of servitude:
adieu
,
toodle-pip
, or
ciao
?

Ciao Slave-driver

The word
slave
comes from
Slav
, and though it varies between Western languages the poor Slavs were everybody’s original slave. The Dutch got
slaaf
, the Germans got
Sklav
, the Spanish got
esclavo
and the Italians got
schiavo
.

Medieval Italians were terribly serious fellows. They would wander around solemnly declaring to each other ‘I am your slave’. However, being medieval Italians, what they actually said was
Sono vostro schiavo
.

Then they got lazy and shortened it to
schiavo
. In the north, where they were lazier still, this got changed to
ciao
.

Then, a few centuries later, the Italians got all energetic and tried to join in the Second World War. British and American troops were sent to tick them off.
5
These Allied troops picked up the word
ciao
and when they got back to their own countries they introduced it into English. It was considered a rather exotic new word. But be wary when you say
ciao
: however dashing and Mediterranean you may think you’re being, you are, etymologically, declaring your own enslavement.

Ciao
has an exact opposite, in the greeting
Hey, man
. In the United States, before the Civil War had finally established the idea that slavery isn’t completely compatible with the Land of the Free, slave-owners used to call their slaves
boy
.

The Battle of Gettysburg freed the slaves and produced a memorable address, but it didn’t, unfortunately, come with a socio-economic plan or a new language. Slave-owners weren’t allowed to own slaves any more, but they continued to be rather nasty to their ex-slaves and kept calling them
boy
in a significant sort of way that annoyed the hell out of the manumitted.

All over America, infuriating white people would address black men with the words ‘Hey, boy’. And it grated. It really grated.

That’s why, in the 1940s, black Americans started taking the fight the other way and greeting each other with the words ‘Hey,
man
’. The vocative was not inserted for the purposes of sexual identification, it was a reaction against all those years of being called
boy
.