This particular usage of “Yankee” is not derogatory.
I agree. I grew up in New England, and i believe the word “Yankee” applies to me. I think it can be used in a derogatory way, but it’s often used neutrally.
It certainly was where I grew up in rural Ohio. “Yankee” was the insult for New Englanders and “Hill-jack” for Southerners. People from Cleveland and northeast Ohio would be insulted as sounding like Yankees, and people from Cincinnati and southwest Ohio as sounding like hill-jacks.
If by “recently”, you mean the Revolutionary War. “Yankee Doodle”, anyone? And even the baseball team has officially had that name since 1913: Over a century is hardly “recent”, for an Americanism.
So the only true Ohioans were from an axis going from Toledo to Columbus? (I’m from southwest Ohio, by the way, and never heard either of these usages.)
As in Yankee Candle Company , Yankee Magazine, New Yankee Workshop, etc. My father-in-law’s wife has “STHNYNKE” as her Florida license plate.
Don’t the Mormons also use the term Gentile, in reference to non-Mormons?
The “Yankee” of Doodle fame is self-deprecation in order to tease the British about who they lost too. That only works with a negative term.
As for the team, I’d guess it’s usage is similar to Cleveland using “Indians”. But unlike that term, there was no caricature or oppressed minority, so their use helped normalize its use.
We’d say Midwesterners, but yes. Ohio has a relatively steep dialect gradient going from Cincinnati to Columbus to Cleveland.
Don’t Afrikaners refer to white non-Afrikaners as Uitlanders? Don’t know if that is or was derogatory. Paging @MrDibble …
Here in South Central Texas, people who are not Hispanic (and also not Black or Asian) are called Anglos. It’s not a derogatory term.
Irish gall means someone who isn’t a gael.
Gweilo is a Cantonese term for Europeans. It was originally derogatory but as I understand it is now regarded as basically neutral.
I think we might be missing an obvious one, here… What about the English word “foreigner”?
E.B. White’s thought on the term “Yankee”:
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast
Worth noting that Mormons use “Gentile” to refer to all non-Mormons (including Jewish people).
The variation I heard was: “…eats fruit pie for breakfast and doesn’t speak French” !
It’s actually old foreigner.
Actually white ghost. Also spelled gwailo. The Mandarin equivalent is laowai.
This Wiki [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gweilo#:~:text=Gweilo%20or%20gwailou%20(Chinese%3A%20鬼,racially%20deprecatory%20and%20pejorative%20use.) describes many more Cantonese and Mandarin names for foreigners, many of which aren’t supposed to be derogative, but can be used that way.
I’m looking for a great YouTube video from Off the Great Wall where they use and describe many of the terms.
My sister-in-law is 50-75% Okinawan, I’m 50/50 Okinawan/Japanese.
When we meet her extended family before the engagement, my Mom told a story I never heard before and asked a question that my Dad never heard. She asked my brother’s future relatives what “yamatunchu” meant in Okinawan because she said that whenever her in-laws had a get-together, they’d be conversing in Okinawan and whenever Yamatunchu was uttered, they’d emphasize the last syllable and all turn to look at her!
Everyone laughed except my Dad* when they explained that Yamatunchu meant Japanese and they put the emphasis on the last syllable was just a tonal accent. Not sure about it just being an accent though.
*My Dad asked my Mom why she never brought it up before and she said it was because she thought everyone was swearing at her!
Native Okinawans are Uchinanchu and Japanese from mainland Japan are Yamatunchu or Naichi.
Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, I thought being Uchinanchu was something bad and Naichi was something good because my parents would talk about how my sisters must marry a good Naichi boy and never Uchinanchu.
I later pieced together that my sisters children would be GASP 3/4" Okinawan, and possibly have a distinctly Okinawan surname like Higa or Gushiken!* It was much less an issue for my brother because he would carry on the family name and I was way too young to be of any concern.
*My surname is Nakamura, which is used in both Okinawa and Japanese. Though with different kanji.