Charlie

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Charlie" = Communist Vietnamese was indeed from "Victor Charlie" = Viet Cong.  We lexicographers refer to this process as "coincidence."

JL

FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: FRITZ JUENGLING
Subject: Re: Charlie
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Dang!! I always thought 'Charlie' was from Viet Cong > VC > Victor Charlie > Charlie.
Fritz

>>> douglas at NB.NET 10/10/04 09:05PM >>>
>"Charlie" used for Japanese forces in World War II is only very rarely
>attested. Presumably it alluded to the fictional (Chinese) detective,
>Charlie Chan, created by Earl Derr Biggers.

Seems reasonable.

>There's no record of the word being applied in the Korean war.

But there was "Bed Check Charlie" in Korea, right? But I suppose this is
just "Charlie" as an arbitrary male name, as in "cheap-charlie", favored by
alliteration.

>Something of a mystery word for the Japanese was "shambo." It seems to
>have been restricted to the First Marine Division and was resurrected in
>Korea for the Chinese.
>Any etymological suggestions?

Nothing conclusive or convincing.

As for "sambo" .... My books seem to tentatively derive this from Spanish
"zambo", which has a sense "person of mixed ancestry (Negro + Indio)" and
another referring to a type of "yellow monkey" [OED]. [An adjective "zambo"
meaning "knock-kneed" is apparently from Latin "scambus"; OK, no problem
there.] Is there any reason to connect knock-knee with those persons of
"zambo" ancestry, or with the monkey? Is it obvious that those people were
named after a type of monkey? Didn't "zamboa" = "grapefruit" appear in
Spanish (apparently from Arabic) before these "zambo" nouns did? Mightn't
the monkey and the mixed-ancestry individual both be named after the fruit,
because of their (perceived) color? But as OED notes it apparently is
uncertain whether the usual English "Sambo" is the same word anyway.

A likely irrelevancy .... Around 1900, the US military in the Philippines
had a popular song "In Zamboanga the Monkeys Have No Tails"; I suppose that
this likened the natives of Zamboanga to monkeys, although I may be
misinterpreting it (it has a lot of nonsense lyrics). Both "zambo" and
"shambo" will be realized as "sambo" in Tagalog/Pilipino, I think: perhaps
it's like "shambo" in some language of the region? "Monkey" would not be
impossible as a wartime epithet.

I find only two instances of this "Shambo" at N'archive, both originating
in the First Marine Division in WW II.

-- Doug Wilson

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