"shambo" (was " Charlie")

[Mark A. Mandel]

"James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> says:

>>>>>
 [Gerald Leonard Cohen:]
>  Just a guess: ["shambo"] Seems to be an alteration of "Sambo."

I hate to disappoint you, but "Little Black Sambo" was a Caucasian!

In the story little Sambo has to deal with a pride (?) of tigers.  Now
tigers are found only in Asia (any tigers in Africa, the limerick about the
"young lady from the Niger" to the contrary, are in zoos).  Hence Sambo
lived in India.  Now many Indians have very dark ("black") skins, but they
are all Caucasians.
 <<<<<

Uh, Jim? We aren't dealing with ethnology here, but with etymology. The
people who might have created "shambo" as an alteration of "Sambo" weren't
taking their knowledge of the fictional character from ethno-geography, but
from a then-popular children's book called _Little Black Sambo_.

And as long as we're nitpicking, residents of India don't come from the
Caucasus. ;-)

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
   Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
   [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]