Forum: OT
Subject: Racial Slur
nakamuram opened this issue on May 21, 2003 ยท 81 posts
Anthony Appleyard posted Thu, 22 May 2003 at 5:34 AM
- "Kike" was probably extracted from some of the -ki and -ski and similar endings common on Slavonic surnames.
- "Paki" is short for "Pakistani". The name was invented officially from "Punjab, Afghan border states, Kashmir, Baluchistan", but (I think) "pak" is also Urdu for "peace". http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivilization/ email group (mostly Hindu Indians) says "Pak" for "Pakistan" and "Paki" for "Pakistani" plenty of times.
- "Yeed" with a long vowel is Yiddish for "Jew", I think.
- The author Rudyard Kipling used the word "nigger" plenty of times in his books without intending derogatoryness.
- I read that the name of the river Niger does not come from the Latin for "black", but from Tuareg language "Gher n Gherem" = "the river of rivers". The Tuareg are Sahara desert nomads.
