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Joined: Aug 2005
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
The thread up yonder about the deprecated exonym Eskimo for the preferred endonym Inuit sent me searching for other kinds of ethnonyms (or demonyms). I ended up at an article in the German Wikipedia about the terms Ortsneckname ( link) which is literally place-nickname (or perhaps topohypocoronym for the pedant completist). It's a kind of humorous nickname for the inhabitants of some place. This made me think of terms like Michigander or Hoosier. And it reminded me of a dictionary I once stumbled upon that opined that all toponyms had their origins in hydronyms.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
This avalanche of onyms is too Überwhelming. (topohypocoronym~!)
I have for you an Ortsneck pronounciation killing little song:
Heut kommt der Hans nach Haus, freut sich die Lies.
Ob er aber über Oberammergau,
oder aber über Unterammergau,
oder aber überhaupt nicht kommt,
Das ist nicht g'wis. (to say out loud at high speed)
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Joined: Aug 2008
Posts: 6
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2008
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Here in New Zealand the exonym pākehā has been deprecated by many but some who are called pākehā like it. There's a really good description of it here, but the word itself is not used much in Māori any more. The current term used almost exclusively in Māori language TV boradcasts is "tau iwi" defined in this dictionaryas "foreign people, non-Māori, foreigner, immigrant." The phrase definitely carries a less welcoming and inclusive tone than pPākehā. Many non-Māori New Zealanders have been happy to call themselves pākehā, but few if any would like to be called tau iwi. My conversations with fluent and bilingual speakers have confirmed that the shift in usage from pākehā to tau iwi was not done without an awareness of its "go home" subtext, a long way from the formal designation "tangata tiriti", "people of the treaty", those who live here by right of the Treaty of Waitangi. Now, even if you've never lived anywhere else and have no ties with any other country, you are still a "foreigner" in Māori. Instead, the word pākehā is now used in Māori to mean "English" in the phrase "te reo pākehā" - the English language.
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Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 390
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 390 |
welcome robinwalter thats quite a mouhful of a first post!
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Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,067
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2008
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the shift in usage from pākehā to tau iwi was not done without an awareness of its "go home" subtext, a long way from the formal designation "tangata tiriti", "people of the treaty", those who live here by right of the Treaty of Waitangi. Now, even if you've never lived anywhere else and have no ties with any other country, you are still a "foreigner" in Māori. This is the inevitable dilemma faced all round the world in situations where by invasion (like NZ) or peaceful trading migration (like Chinese in various places), an incoming people have grown to rival or outnumber the indigenous population, but not by so much that the incomers have so much power they can do whatever they like and get away with it (as in the case with Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, etc). It is a huge problem in Fiji, Malaysia and other places with large ethnic Chinese populations, but also with Russians in some former Soviet Republics, various Balkan groups, etc.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2008
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the shift in usage from pākehā to tau iwi was not done without an awareness of its "go home" subtext, a long way from the formal designation "tangata tiriti", "people of the treaty", those who live here by right of the Treaty of Waitangi. Now, even if you've never lived anywhere else and have no ties with any other country, you are still a "foreigner" in Māori. This is the inevitable dilemma faced all round the world in situations where by invasion (like NZ) or peaceful trading migration (like Chinese in various places), an incoming people have grown to rival or outnumber the indigenous population, but not by so much that the incomers have so much power they can do whatever they like and get away with it (as in the case with Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, etc). The incomers to New Zealand have outnumbered the indigenous people by a large enough margin to "do whatever they like and get away with it". History shows that the dominant non-indigenous population groupcould and did do pretty much what they liked, with only a little less ruthlessness than in Australia. At one stage the Māori population was not much larger as a percentage of the total than is true of Aboriginal Australians, and even now the most generous count has them at between 8-14% of the total, a figure close to being matched by Asians. The real difference is that New Zealand's existence was founded on a document that purported to guarantee certain rights to the indigenous people, and in recent decades those rights have been more vigorously asserted. One way in which those rights are being expressed is in the conscious choice of a more exclusionary term, an "exonym", to replace an older exonym that was beginning to be adopted by some of those it was applied to. It's also not as much of a problem in Fiji as it used to be with the Indo-fijian population dropping rapidly. It's now down to around 41% of the total, down from high of nearly 51% before the first coup in 1987
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Joined: Nov 2007
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 390 |
that's some interesting stuff you've posted there robinwalter but I think now's probably a good time to warn you that politics and religion are no-go zones here.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
Heut kommt der Hans nach Haus ... g'wis
Choice.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
Here in New Zealand the exonym pākehā has been deprecated by many but some who are called pākehā like it.
Yes, some folks like exonyms. A German nickname for citizens of the USA is Ami 'Yank' (< Amerikaner). It is just a wee bit pejorative, but I like it, and when I lived in the Rhineland used it as a self-designation. Sometimes shocked the more sedate and politically correct. The area I lived in had been in the former British occupation zone. Older peole still talked about die Tommies.
Thanks for the link to that interesting article and welcome aboard.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,067
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,067 |
that's some interesting stuff you've posted there robinwalter but I think now's probably a good time to warn you that politics and religion are no-go zones here. Except where it arises naturally from the discussion of words, as it does here. You can't divorce words from their social context. However, we usually reach a point where the discussion becomes more about politics than words then we stop. We've probably reached that point.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Well, I'll add Welcome, robin; I am delighted to see another Zilder here! 
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