The word nigger has historically been used in the names of products, colors, plants, as place names, and as people's nicknames, among others, but has fallen out of favor since the 20th century.
The word nigger has historically been used in the names of products, colors, plants, as place names, and as people's nicknames, among others, but has fallen out of favor since the 20th century.
The word nigger was often featured in branding and packaging consumer products. In 1925, the Matthes Coal and Construction Company was marketing "Niggerhead Coal" as more efficient and a better buy than soft coal. [1] Bouclé fabric was referred to as niggerhead in advertisements. [1] [2] An Australian company produced various sorts of licorice candy under the "Nigger Boy" label. These included candy cigarettes and one box with an image of an Indian snake charmer. [3] [4] [5] Compare these with the various national varieties and names for chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, and with Darlie, formerly Darkie, toothpaste. [6] As the term became less acceptable in mainstream culture, product names were changed. "Nigger Hair Tobacco" became " Bigger Hair ", and "Niggerhead Oysters" became "Negro Head". [7] [1]
Some colloquial or local names for plants and animals used to include the word "nigger" or "niggerhead".
The colloquial names for echinacea (coneflower) are "Kansas niggerhead" and "Wild niggerhead".[ citation needed ] The cotton-top cactus ( Echinocactus polycephalus ) is a round, cabbage-sized plant covered with large, crooked thorns, and used to be known in Arizona as the "niggerhead cactus".[ citation needed ] In the early 20th century, double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) were known in some areas of Florida as "nigger geese". [8] In some parts of the U.S., Brazil nuts were known as "nigger toes". [9] Red cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) was sometimes referred to as "Niggerhead cabbage" in the United States, and in Britain at least as recently as the 1980s. [10] [1] [11]
The "niggerhead termite" ( Nasutitermes graveolus) is a native of Australia. [12]
The butterfly Orsotriaena medus had historically been called "the nigger", referring to its dark brown colour, [13] but it has been renamed in Australian faunal works to "smooth-eyed bushbrown", [14] "medus brown" [15] in India, and "dark grass-brown" [16] in Southeast Asia.
The black Labrador dog owned by Guy Gibson, Squadron Leader of RAF 617 Squadron, 'The Dam Busters', was called Nigger (see Nigger (dog)). In 21st century re-runs on UK (at least) TV, scenes in which the dog's name is mentioned are cut. The dog was run over outside the airfield, and in 2020 a memorial at the spot was replaced with one on which the dog's name is not mentioned.
The black cat owned by H.P. Lovecraft, American cosmic horror author, was called Nigger-man. The cat was owned by him from childhood until its death in 1904. [17] Lovecraft would later use the name again for a fictional cat in The Rats in the Walls, first published in 1924.
A shade of dark brown used to be known as "nigger brown" or simply "nigger"; [18] other colors were also prefixed with the word. Usage as a color word continued for some time after it was no longer acceptable about people. [19] Nigger brown commonly identified a colour in the clothing industry and advertising of the early 20th century. [20]
During the Spanish–American War U.S. Army General John J. Pershing's original nickname, Nigger Jack, given to him as an instructor at West Point because of his service with "Buffalo Soldier" units, was euphemized to Black Jack by reporters. [21] [22]
In the first half of the twentieth century, before Major League Baseball was racially integrated, many dark-skinned and dark-complexioned players were nicknamed Nig; [23] [24] examples are: Johnny Beazley (1941–49), Joe Berry (1921–22), Bobby Bragan (1940–48), Nig Clarke (1905–20), George Cuppy (1892–1901), Nig Fuller (1902), Johnny Grabowski (1923–31), Nig Lipscomb (1937), Charlie Niebergall (1921–24), Nig Perrine (1907), and Frank Smith (1904–15).
The 1933 movie The Bowery with George Raft and Wallace Beery includes a sports bar in New York City named "Nigger Joe's".[ citation needed ]
In 1960, a stand at the stadium in Toowoomba, Australia, was named the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand", honoring 1920s rugby league player Edwin Brown, ironically nicknamed because of his pale white skin; his tombstone is engraved Nigger. Stephen Hagan, a lecturer at the Kumbari/Ngurpai Lag Higher Education Center of the University of Southern Queensland, sued the Toowoomba council over the use of nigger in the stand's name; the district and state courts dismissed his lawsuit. He appealed to the High Court of Australia, who ruled the naming matter beyond federal jurisdiction. At first, some Aboriginal Australians did not share Hagan's opposition to nigger. [25] Hagan appealed to the United Nations, winning a committee recommendation to the Australian federal government, that it force the Queensland state government to remove the word nigger from the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" name. The Australian federal government followed the High Court's jurisdiction ruling. In September 2008, the stand was demolished. The Queensland Sports Minister, Judy Spence, said that using nigger would be unacceptable, for the stand or on any commemorative plaque. The 2005 book The N Word: One Man's Stand by Hagan includes this episode. [25] [26]
Many places once had names that included the word "nigger", sometimes named after a person, or a historical event, or for a perceived resemblance of a geographic feature to a human being (see Niggerhead). Most of these place names have long since been changed.
The majority of places with the word in their name were located in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The term "nigger" has historically been used in several Australian place names, especially in Queensland.
In 2003, two creeks in Wondecla, Queensland, previously known as Nigger Creek and North Nigger Creek, were renamed to Wondecla Creek and North Wondecla Creek respectively. This was met with opposition from a local council, which defended the use as a testimony to the region's history. [27] Similarly (although decades earlier), a local school, opened as Nigger Creek Provisional School in 1883, was renamed Nigger Creek State School in 1909 and then Wondecla State School in 1922. The school closed in 1958. [28]
In 2017, several place names in Queensland such as the island of Nigger Head (which is currently unnamed), were changed due to their use of terms such as "nigger". [29]
There is a creek in Northern Territory formerly named "Nigger Creek". The Northern Territory Place Names Register is in the process of renaming the creek. [30]
More recently,[ when? ] the Tasmanian Government controversially printed new maps showing a rock named "Niggerhead Rock". [31] "Niggerhead Rock", along with "Suicide Bay", "Victory Hill" and several other places, have been renamed with Tasmanian Aboriginal names. The new names are Karanutung, Luwuka and Timuk, respectively. [32]
At Penticton, British Columbia, "Niggertoe Mountain" was renamed Mount Nkwala. The place-name derived from a 1908 Christmas story about three black men who died in a blizzard; the next day, the bodies of two were found at the foot of the mountain. [33] John Ware, an influential cowboy in early Alberta, has several features named after him, including "Nigger John Ridge", which is now John Ware Ridge. [34]
An island in North Karelia named Neekerisaari (lit. 'Nigger Island') had its name removed in 2020. [35] It is now known as Seppänen .
In December 2016, the New Zealand Geographic Board changed three place names in Canterbury in the South Island. Nigger Hill, Niggerhead, and Nigger Stream were renamed Kānuka Hills, Tawhai Hill, and Pūkio Stream, respectively. [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] However, other racially charged place names remain, including "Darkies Creek", "Darkies Terrace Track", and "Darkies Terrace" in South Island, named after African-American prospector Arthur "Darkie" Addison in the 1860s, [41] and "Darkie Stream" in North Island. [42]
In West Texas, "Dead Nigger Creek" was renamed "Dead Negro Draw"; [43] both names probably commemorate the Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877. [44] Curtis Island in Maine used to be known as either Negro [45] or Nigger Island. [46] The island was renamed in 1934 after Cyrus H. K. Curtis, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post , who lived locally. [47] It had a baseball team who wore uniforms emblazoned with "Nigger Island" (or in one case, "Nigger Ilsand"). [48] Negro Head Road, or Nigger Head Road, referred to many places in the Old South where black body parts were displayed in warning (see Lynching in the United States).[ citation needed ] In Los Angeles, Nigger Alley or Negro Alley was used on maps to signify the street originally called Calle de los Negros in the Spanish and Mexican period, referring to Afromestizo or mulatto Mexican residents. [49]
In Saint Paul, Minnesota, a small pond was named "Nigger Lake", but was changed to "Dead Horse Lake" in the 1930s.
On July 27, 1962, citing a standard of "offensive to many", and "no one now would suggest a new name including the word", Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall sent a letter to the United States Geological Survey's board chairman to press for a plan to remove the use of the word "nigger" anywhere it appeared in the organization's topographical maps product, and to request a policy for and change of all occurrences of it on its maps. [50] [51] [1] This led to a wider codified policy by the USGS against use of any ethnic slur in any map name. Where "nigger" appeared on USGS map objects and another suitable name had not been offered, it was changed to "negro", by 1967. [50] There were, however, communities who did not comply, and disputes extended into the 1970s. [1] In 1971, about 300 students at the University of Vermont protested property owned by the university under the names "Niggerhead Pond" and "Niggerhead Mountain". [1]
During the 2012 United States presidential election campaign in October 2011, the Washington Post reported that Rick Perry, candidate for the Republican nomination, leases a hunting camp once called "Niggerhead". Although it had not been named by him nor his family, according to some local residents interviewed by the Post the Perrys used the camp for years before painting over a large rock with that name on it which stands at an entrance, [52] [1] however Perry's campaign stated that the Perrys painted over the rock almost immediately after acquiring a lease on the property in 1983. [53] [54]
Some renamings honor a real person. As early as 1936, "Nigger Hollow" in Pennsylvania, named after Daniel Hughes, a free black man who saved others on the Underground Railroad, [55] was renamed Freedom Road. [56] "Nigger Nate Grade Road", near Temecula, California, named for Nate Harrison, an ex-slave and settler, was renamed "Nathan Harrison Grade Road" in 1955, at the request of the NAACP. [57]
Sometimes other substitutes for "nigger" were used. "Nigger Head Mountain", at Burnet, Texas, was named because the forest atop it resembled a black man's hair. In 1966, the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, denounced the racist name, asking the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the U.S. Forest Service to rename it, becoming "Colored Mountain" in 1968.[ citation needed ] Other renamings were more creative. "Nigger Head Rock", protruding from a cliff above Highway 421, north of Pennington Gap, Virginia, was renamed "Great Stone Face" in the 1970s.[ citation needed ]
Some names have been metaphorically or literally wiped off the map. In the 1990s, the public authorities stripped the names of "Niggertown Marsh" and the neighbouring Niggertown Knoll in Florida from public record and maps, which was the site of an early settlement of freed black people. [58] A watercourse in the Sacramento Valley was known as Big Nigger Sam's Slough. [59]
Sometimes a name changes more than once: a peak above Santa Monica, California was first renamed "Negrohead Mountain", and in February 2010 was renamed again to Ballard Mountain, in honor of John Ballard, a black pioneer who settled the area in the nineteenth century. A point on the Lower Mississippi River, in West Baton Rouge Parish, that was named "Free Nigger Point" until the late twentieth century, first was renamed "Free Negro Point", but currently is named "Wilkinson Point". [60] "Nigger Bill Canyon" in southeast Utah was named after William Grandstaff, a mixed-race cowboy who lived there in the late 1870s. [61] In the 1960s, it was renamed Negro Bill Canyon. Within the past few years, there has been a campaign to rename it again, as Grandstaff Canyon, but this is opposed by the local NAACP chapter, whose president said "Negro is an acceptable word". [62] However the trailhead for the hiking trail up the canyon was renamed in September 2016 to "Grandstaff Trailhead". [63] The new sign for the trailhead was stolen within five days of installation. [64]
In 2009, research scientists for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation learned that there were geographical features and roads in the state still bearing the word "nigger" in official sources. Searches of regulatory indices and maps revealed even further examples in Tompkins County and Hamilton County. In 2011, the Department began the process of scrubbing those names from official documents. [65]
In the English language, nigger is a racial slur directed at black people. Starting in the 1990s, references to nigger have been increasingly replaced by the euphemism "the N-word", notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used. In an instance of linguistic reappropriation, the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans, most commonly in the form of nigga, whose spelling originated from the phonological system of African-American English.
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and location information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories; the associated states of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau; and Antarctica. It is a type of gazetteer. It was developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote the standardization of feature names.
Kaffir, also spelled Cafri, is an exonym and an ethnic slur – the use of it in reference to black people being particularly common in South Africa. In Arabic, the word kāfir ("unbeliever") was originally applied to non-Muslims before becoming predominantly focused on pagan zanj who were increasingly used as slaves. During the Age of Exploration in early modern Europe, variants of the Latin term cafer were adopted in reference to non-Muslim Bantu peoples even when they were monotheistic. It was eventually used, particularly in Afrikaans, for any black person during the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid eras, closely associated with South African racism, it became a pejorative by the mid-20th century and is now considered extremely offensive hate speech. Punishing continuing use of the term was one of the concerns of the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act enacted by the South African parliament in the year 2000 and it is now euphemistically addressed as the K-word in South African English.
Grandstaff Canyon is a canyon in southern Grand County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Colorado River watershed. Its stream flows directly into the main channel of the Colorado River within Moab Canyon.
The English word squaw is an ethnic and sexual slur, historically used for Indigenous North American women. Contemporary use of the term, especially by non-Natives, is considered derogatory, misogynist, and racist.
In several English-speaking countries, the word niggerhead or nigger head is a former name for several things thought to resemble the head of a black person. The name is now taboo in normal usage.
Nigger Head was the name of a small island in the northern part of Shelburne Bay in far north Queensland, Australia about 30 km north of Cape Grenville, Cape York Peninsula in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Queensland, Australia. It was named so because it is an isolated coral outcrop; such outcrops were known as niggerheads by British sailors.
Clive Berghofer Stadium is a stadium in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. Situated on Mary Street on the eastern fringes of Toowoomba CBD adjacent to Queens Park and Toowoomba East State School. The ticket counters and entrance are on Arthur Street behind the grandstand.
"Nigger in the woodpile" or "nigger in the fence" is a figure of speech originating in the United States meaning "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed—something suspicious or wrong".
Orsotriaena medus is a butterfly found in south Asia, southeast Asia, and Australia. It is the only species in the genus Orsotriaena, first described by Hans Daniel Johan Wallengren in 1858.
The New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa (NZGB) has authority over geographical and hydrographic names within New Zealand and its territorial waters. This includes the naming of small urban settlements, localities, mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, harbours and natural features and may include researching local Māori names. It has named many geographical features in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. It has no authority to alter street names or the name of any country.
In the English language, the word negro is a term historically used to denote people considered to be of Black African heritage. The word negro means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive, or completely neutral, largely depending on the region or country where it is used, as well as the time period and context in which it is applied. It has various equivalents in other languages of Europe.
Place names considered unusual can include those which are also offensive words, inadvertently humorous or highly charged words, as well as place names of unorthodox spelling and pronunciation, including especially short or long names. These names often have an unintended effect or double-meaning when read by someone who speaks another language.
Stephen Hagan is an Australian author and anti-racism campaigner. He is also a newspaper editor, documentary maker, university lecturer and former diplomat.
Niggerhead is a former name for several things thought to resemble the head of a black person.
Edwin Stanley "Nigger" Brown (1898–1972) was an Australian rugby league player who played in the 1910s and 1920s. A Queensland state and Australian international representative centre, he played club rugby in Toowoomba for Newtown.
Tims River, formerly Negro Run, is a 1.8 mile long tributary of the Robinson River within the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
Wondecla is a rural locality in the Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census Wondecla had a population of 638 people.
Pūkio Stream, formerly Nigger Stream until 2016, is a river in North Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand. It flows from The Candlesticks range of the Southern Alps to the Esk River. The underfit stream cuts through terraces of glacial outwash gravels in its course, culminating in a 120-metre-deep (400 ft) incised gorge near to its confluence with the Esk.
This article treats the usage of the word nigger in reference to African Americans and others of African or mixed African and other ethnic origin in the art of Western culture and the English language.
The other day I posted about Nigger Boy Licorice, a brand of sweet that was popular in Australia for many years up until the mid-1960s when it was suddenly realised that people found the name Nigger Boy to be offensive rather than amusing. ... I do have a few various offensive advertisements that the company made.
... the one thing I did show which left everyone in the room speechless was this ad, taken from an old Australian comic (I think it was a Dagwood comic. I have it downstairs buried in a box somewhere). If the ad wasn't enough then what really stunned people was when I told them that this ad appeared in all it's[ sic ] glory in the mid to late 1960s. There was more discussion about this ad and it's merits[ sic ] than anything else in the entire course ...
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)Hearing angmo so often took me back to my childhood, when my friends and I used the words Jew and Gyp (the latter short for Gypsy) as verbs, meaning to cheat. At that time, in the 1960s, other racial epithets, these based on physical appearance, were commonly heard: cracker, slant-eye, bongo lips, knit-head. To digress to the ludicrous, Brazil nuts were called "nigger toes."
Nigger and Pink Cardigan