Sambo -- not 1861 or 1704, but 1657

[Jonathan Lighter]

 I meant the earliest generic front-name type nickname for any ethnic group.

All the early contenders seem to date from the 17th C.

JL

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Robin Hamilton <
robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:

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> Poster:       Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Sambo -- not 1861 or 1704, but 1657
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > I suppose the contestant are Taffy, Sawney & Paddy.
> >
> > OED has "a1700" for Taffy; EEBO seems to have it from the mid 17th C.
> > "a1704" for Sawney (Scotsman -- as opposed to Sawney = fool)
> > Paddy = 1714
> >
> > I didn't check EEBO for Sawney or Paddy -- seemed likely to be a pain in
> > the ass.
> >
> > GAT
>
> And we could add to Joel's "Jock" (supplementing Sawney) for a Scotsman
> (though I suspect it doesn't quite partake of the pejorative register of
> the
> other terms), "Mick" (supplementing Paddy) for an Irishman.
>
> But a date of "a1704" for Sawney is interesting if we consider Sawney Bean,
> the Demon Cannibal of Edinburgh.
>
> Sawney Bean and his anthropophagic brood were supposed to date, and
> terminate, not long before 1603, just before Jimmy the Sixth and One
> finally
> skipped south.  But if I remember correctly, the legend first appears (or,
> feeling about folk from Edinburgh as I do, perhaps we should rather say the
> truth first surfaces) in the early eighteenth century.
>
> For what it's worth.  Sweeney Todd is a distinctly pale imitation of his
> precursor, who can still be viewed large as life in the midst of a kitchen
> festooned with appropriate joints of meat in Madam Tussaud's House of
> Horrors somewhere along the Royal Mile.
>
> (The best-written version of the Sawney Bean story is by S.R.Crockett in
> _The Grey Man_).
>
> Robin
>
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