[Ads-l] ching chong (1862?)

Barretts Mail mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM
Mon Sep 2 14:38:55 UTC 2019


Three more earlier possibilities:

1. Fraser’s Magazine
James Anthony Froude, John Tulloch
1831 (Google-dated; I searched for subsequent years into the 1840s. “1841” came up but with no text)
https://tinyurl.com/yxqm9qoq <https://tinyurl.com/yxqm9qoq>

Searching for “1831” brings up mention of sermons. Perhaps that’s why the embedded quotes are used in the second citation.

****
...jealousy of Ching, and Chang’s likeness to Lord Byron….

...

“‘ Suppose Chang went into the church,
‘And Ching should enter in the navy,
####
####

2. The 1843 (https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/peter-parley%27s-tales-china-chinese/first-edition/ <https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/peter-parley's-tales-china-chinese/first-edition/>) "Peter Parley's Tales about China and the Chinese" (https://tinyurl.com/y6egjxvf <https://tinyurl.com/y6egjxvf>) has “Chang”, “Ching” and “Chong” as names.

3. Chang and Eng Bunker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_and_Eng_Bunker <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_and_Eng_Bunker>), the conjoined twins from Siam but with Chinese ancestry. 

April 1857
The Chinaman
Putnam’s Monthly
https://tinyurl.com/y3d6f27n <https://tinyurl.com/y3d6f27n>

There is an asterisk next to the title which says "The Life of Tai-Ping-Wang, Chief of the Chinese Insurrection” by John Milton Mackie, 1957, but there is a similar text from 1859 titled "The New and the Old: Or, California and India in Romantic Aspects” by John Williamson Palmer. Perhaps Palmer was plagiarizing. 

Palmer’s has live text in a PDF at https://www.loc.gov/item/03028206/ <https://www.loc.gov/item/03028206/> so I used it for the citation below.

****
My own earliest idea of a Chinaman was derived from the Siamese Twins…. I was not yet so nice in my geographical and ethnological distinctions as to appreciate their points of difference from the Peter Parley type of Chinaman.... And therefore, deduced I, all Chinamen are born double; all Chinamen are Chang-Eng….
####
####

Benjamin Barrett (he/him/his)
Formerly of Seattle, WA

> On 1 Sep 2019, at 16:14, Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Good points. Perhaps it was a combination of ”Chin[a|ese]", plus the
> frequency of "ch" in anglicized transliterations of Chinese names and food
> terms, and the fairly high frequencies of related sounds like /k/, /sh/,
> /zh/ and /dzh/ (/j/), not just /tsh/ (/ch/).
> 
> I'm on mobile right now; no easy way to input IPA.
> 
> On Sun, Sep 1, 2019, 2:01 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> I doubt a widespread impression could have been formed from hearing
>> Chinese people speak.
>> 
>> So if a Chinese language is to be the source of “ching chong”, it was
>> probably due to writing or a common word such as “China” or “Qing", which
>> leads to the identification of words that it might come from.
>> 
> 


------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list