Derogitory terms that became the actual names for things

[TheSeaOtter]

@buddha_david

Thagomizer

Ok, that’s amazing.

[Dendarii_Dame]

There is some evidence that “Christian” was originally derogatory:

What does the name 'Christian' mean?

[Ellis_Aponte_Jr]

soap operas

[Colibri]

@buddha_david

Thagomizer

Except I don’t think it was derogatory.

[Colibri]

@Urbanredneck

I never knew the term “squaw” was a derogatory term.

That’s rather the reverse, in that the original meaning was probably not derogatory. It’s just the word for “woman” in Algonquin languages. Claims that it meant “female genitals” are recent and probably incorrect. It is frequently considered derogatory today, however.

[RealityChuck]

“Sooners” for those who live in Oklahoma. It was originally a derogatory term for those who took land before they were legally allowed to.

[ISiddiqui]

Continuing the religious groups who were called something derogatory and later adopted it:

Lutheran

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

Some state nicknames, too, like tarheel and cracker.

@MrDibble

Quakers I know don’t call themselves that. They just call themselves Friends.

@Alan_Smithee

I grew up Quaker and all the Quakers I knew called themselves that. Friends was used more formally, and some preferred it, but Quaker was very widespread, and I don’t think anyone avoided it completely.

The subtext of the OP I think is “labels that are no longer pejorative.” Quaker hasn’t been for two centuries.

[Defensive_Indifference]

I never gave any thought to the origin of Quaker and had no idea it was originally derogatory. Was the (insulting) idea that the peace-loving Friends quaked in fear or something? Or was it a reference to some practice of theirs?

[BigT]

@Bayard

I never gave any thought to the origin of Quaker and had no idea it was originally derogatory. Was the (insulting) idea that the peace-loving Friends quaked in fear or something? Or was it a reference to some practice of theirs?

No, but because they would tell people to “tremble at the word of the Lord,” at least, according to George Fox’s biography–as reference on Wikipedia.

In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to George Fox’s autobiography, Bennet “was the first person that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord”

[mbh]

Nevermind. Ninja’d by BigT.

[Malthus]

Wales or Welsh. Allegedly, originally meant something like “foreigner / slave”.

welsh | Etymology, origin and meaning of the name welsh by etymonline

[MrDibble]

@Alan_Smithee

I grew up Quaker and all the Quakers I knew called themselves that. Friends was used more formally, and some preferred it, but Quaker was very widespread, and I don’t think anyone avoided it completely.

English or American? The ones I know are East Anglian, I’m curious if there’s a regional difference.

[Hampshire]

Geek. Probably originally used to describe circus side-show acts in a derogitory way. Later as I remember in the 70s was a negative term for small scrawny nerdy types that got picked on a lot (as in the song “Pencil Neck Geek”).
Then in the 90s with the boom in home computers it became associated with those with knowledge of them (computer geek, founding of the geek squad).
Now days it’s used to describe anyone who is really into their hobby (car geek, history geek, sports geek).

[Moriarty]

Was Black (in the context of race), at one time, considered derogatory? I know the inverse was true - Negro used to be a respectable term, but isn’t now.

[WordMan]

Yankee Doodle.

[bup]

Black hole.

[WordMan]

Too late to add: Oh, and in UK Soccer, West Brom Albion’s nickname of The Baggies was originally derogatory.

[Defensive_Indifference]

@BigT

No, but because they would tell people to “tremble at the word of the Lord,” at least, according to George Fox’s biography–as reference on Wikipedia.

In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to George Fox’s autobiography, Bennet “was the first person that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord”

Interesting! Thanks.

[CalMeacham]

The name isn’t exactly derogatory, but there’s a kinship there – Poisson’s Spot

At the beginning of the 19th century, the idea that light does not simply propagate along straight lines gained traction. Thomas Young published his double-slit experiment in 1807.[6] The original Arago spot experiment was carried out a decade later, and was the deciding experiment on the question of whether light is a particle or a wave. It is thus an example of an experimentum crucis.

At that time, many favored Isaac Newton’s corpuscular theory of light, among them the theoretician Siméon Denis Poisson.[7] In 1818 the French Academy of Sciences launched a competition to explain the properties of light, where Poisson was one of the members of the judging committee. The civil engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel entered this competition by submitting a new wave theory of light.[8]

Poisson studied Fresnel’s theory in detail, and, being a supporter of the particle-theory of light, looked for a way to prove it wrong. Poisson thought he had found a flaw when he argued that a consequence of Fresnel’s theory was that there would exist an on-axis bright spot in the shadow of a circular obstacle, where there should be complete darkness according to the particle-theory of light. Since the Arago spot is not easily observed in every-day situations, Poisson interpreted it as an absurd result and that it should disprove Fresnel’s theory.

However, the head of the committee, Dominique-François-Jean Arago—who incidentally later became Prime Minister of France—decided to perform the experiment in more detail. He molded a 2 mm metallic disk to a glass plate with wax.[9] He succeeded in observing the predicted spot, which convinced most scientists of the wave-nature of light, and gave Fresnel the win.

Since Arago actually observed the spot (which Poisson predicted, scornfully, and held irts non-existence to disprove the wave theory of light), it’s sometimes called Arago’s Spot, which is what Wikipedia calls it

Arago spot