"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:53:20 -0500, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

>On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 23:40:56 -0500, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>Why would it have changed? Well, IF it changed, and IF there is an
>>identifiable reason, I can think of two possibilities offhand: (1)
>>"gook" being likened to "spook" as an ethnic epithet, ca. 1945; (2)
>>Korean "mi-guk" being perceived as /miguk/ rather than /migUk/ and
>>taken as a folk-etymon, ca. 1950.
>
>Should we throw "kook" in the mix?  It's suggestive that "gook"
>apparently derives from "goo-goo" and "kook" from "cuckoo"/"koo-koo".
>
>Also, I found a Washington Post letter to the editor from 1950 deriving
>"gook" from "goo-goo", but in the "goo-goo eyes" sense:
>
>-----
>Washington Post, Sep 14, 1950, p. 10
>"Gook" is derived from "goo goo" eyes, a derogatory term for Asiatics.
>The term no doubt isn't helping us "win friends and influence people."
>This is especially true of the South Koreans. ...
>Joseph Regal. Boston, Mass.
>[Editor's Note: Yet the South Koreans seem to have adopted the word and
>are applying it to the North Koreans!]
>-----
>
>The editor's note could be based on yet another misunderstanding of
>Korean: "miguk" = 'American person', "hanguk" = 'Korean person'.

More kooky kross-kultural konfusion:

-----
Chicago Tribune, Oct 23, 1947, p. 36
You might be interested in the names given to America in the orient.
Walter Simmons writes from Korea that America there is called Mikook
[pronounced mee-gook]. Written in Chinese characters, this translates as
"beautiful country," kook meaning country. Most Koreans, incidentally,
take no offense when called gooks by GI's. They consider it a rather
oafish compliment, meaning that the GI and the Korean both belong to the
same country.
-----


--Ben Zimmer