Paddy (ethnophaulism)

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Paddy (British pronunciation: [ padi ], American and Irish pronunciation: [ PAEDI ]) is a jokingly to pejoratively used nickname for Irish .

History and Uses

The Paddy's at Dinner with Puddinghead - this English caricature from 1789 shows the then Prince of Wales and later King George IV (vilified as “pudding head”) surrounded by his Irish followers, who are depicted as cattle.

The nickname goes back to the first name "Paddy" , a short or nickname in Irish English of the name Patrick, which is widespread in Ireland . In Irish (Gaelic) it corresponds to the form Páidín , short for Pádraig . It indirectly refers to Patrick of Ireland , the national and patron saint of the country, to whom the popularity of the name in Ireland is owed. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a poem from Richard Steele's Poetical Miscellanies (1714) as the first record of its use as a nickname for an Irishman .

The corresponding nicknames for the inhabitants of the other parts of Great Britain are also derived from first names: " Taffy " as a name for Welsh and " Jock " for Scots. Englishmen, especially English soldiers, have often been dubbed “ Tommy ” since the First World War , although this term also refers to a soldier in the British armed forces regardless of origin. Like these terms, “paddy” is used from loving to joking, but can also be viewed as derogatory and offensive, i.e. as ethnophaulism . This is particularly the case when combined with the centuries-old prejudices against Ireland and the Irish; Even more than the Welsh people, the Irish were and are often regarded by many English as a downright uncivilized people, as stupid, lazy, brutalized, drunk, irascible and talkative. This anti-Irish racism, and with it the nickname Paddy, spread particularly in the 19th century with the emigration of millions of impoverished Irish in the United States and elsewhere. In a survey published in 2010 on the perception of ethnophaulisms, "Paddy" ranked on a scale from 0 to 10 with a value of 2.88 in acceptance far behind "Taffy" (5.15), "Tommy" (4.60) and "Jock" ( 4.38) and just before “ Sauerkraut ” (2.80) as a derisive term for Germans. Even more offensive are the allusions to Irish peat bogs , which have long been widespread in anti-Irish documents , such as peat-digger , peat-bogger and turf-cutter (between 2.83 and 2.43) as well as bogger , bog-trotter and bog-rat (between 2.29 and 1.57), as well as the topos of the "potato eater ", which has been very polluted since the Great Famine of 1845–1849 , which is expressed in mock names such as spud (2.50) and potato-eater (2.13).

There are also numerous other mock names for Irish people, the name " Mick " or " Mickey ", first documented in 1850 and widely used in America until the 20th century, should be mentioned ; however, it has become increasingly uncommon and is no longer perceived as overly offensive (3.88). In his study The Language of Ethnic Conflict (1983), the linguist Irving Lewis Allen lists 55 more or less offensive ethnophaulisms for the Irish for American English alone ; only for the black (Afro-American) and the Jewish minority does it record an even larger repertoire of swear words.

The slang expression “ paddy waggon ”, “police vehicle , 'tub'” , which has been widespread in American English since the early 20th century, is likely to derive from paddy as a disparaging term for Irish .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ paddy, n. 2 , in: Oxford English Dictionary (online edition), < http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/135925?rskey=MRWRXw&result=2&isAdvanced=false > (restricted access, accessed May 19, 2013 ).
  2. ↑ Irving Allen Lewis: Personal Names that Became Ethnic Epithets . In: Names: A Journal of Onomastics 31: 4, 1983. pp. 307-317.
  3. ^ Geoffrey Hughes: An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World . ME Sharpe, Armonk NY 2006. pp. 254-257.
  4. ^ Diana R. Rice, Dominic Abrams et al .: What Did You Just Call Me? European and American Ratings of the Valence of Ethnophaulisms . In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29: 1, 2010. pp. 117-131.
  5. ↑ According to Geoffrey Hughes: An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World . ME Sharpe, Armonk NY 2006. p. 256.
  6. ^ Anatoly Liberman : Monthly etymology gleanings for March 2015, Part 2 , in The Oxford Etymologist (Blog), April 8, 2015.