# Favorite fictional anti-human slurs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 14, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391 "2009-03-14T03:13:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/21 "2009-03-14T12:15:41Z")
Warhammer 40K Eldar call humans Mon-Keigh, too. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/22 "2009-03-14T13:11:38Z")
I can’t strictly remember right now, but I want to say that in the Wing Commander games, the Kilrathi pilots would taunt the human pilots by calling them “Hairless Apes” and the like. Conversely, the human pilots would taunt the Kilrathi pilots by calling them “Kitty”, “Gato”, “Furball” and other variations on cats (the Kilrathi were cat-people, of course). I had a weird dream one time where an alien soldier referred to a human prisoner as a “Milk Sucker”. That dream made for an unusually coherent obviously not tied into reality in any way story, actually. Eventually I need to expand that into a written story. Another one from the Heinlen stories, though another human-to-human general reference: Humans who live on the moon are Loonies (nobody ever makes any direct comment on their relative sanity, though I think there’s a throwaway reference to them generally being more sensible than their Earther counterparts). ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/23 "2009-03-14T13:59:20Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > I can’t strictly remember right now, but I want to say that in the Wing Commander games, the Kilrathi pilots would taunt the human pilots by calling them “Hairless Apes” and the like. Now that I’m reminded, I do recall the “hairless ape” insult. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/24 "2009-03-14T15:21:43Z")
“Squirrels” from David Brin’s Sooner trilogy. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/25 "2009-03-14T15:42:11Z")
“Mud Monkeys” from Supernatural always sounded delightfully ethnic. I remember faintly people being called “splats” due to our relative fragility in some sci-fi story or other. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/26 "2009-03-14T16:05:11Z")
The hobbit equivalents from “Bored of the Rings” called humans “Biggers.” The Groaci in the Retief novels called humans “Terries.” With a sneer. ---
**Author:** ![threeorange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@threeorange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threeorange)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/27 "2009-03-14T16:47:40Z")
In the short-lived Fox series **Alien Nation** , humans were called “Terts” by the some of the extraterrestrial immigrants; I’m pretty sure this was a contraction of “terrestrials”. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/28 "2009-03-14T17:21:16Z")
The alien invaders in Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series called humans “Big Uglies”. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/29 "2009-03-14T17:42:50Z")
The elite supermen (or was it Gruad?) in The Illuminatus Trilogy called ordinary people ‘Me-hums’. Short for mere humans. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/30 "2009-03-14T17:42:54Z")
In the comic strip _Sherman’s Lagoon_, the lead character is a Great White Shark. His favorite food is “hairless beach-ape”. (If he can’t get that, he will settle for “poodle: the other white meat”.) In Wendy and Richard Pini’s _Elfquest_, humans are occasionally referred to as “round-ears”, or “stinking round-eared scum”. Another from Heinlein: the Methuselahs referred to normal humans as “ephemerals”. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/31 "2009-03-14T18:10:11Z")
The Feegles in the Discworld call humans “bigjobs”, and they’re clearly not very impressed with them. I think the dwarfs and trolls might have less than flattering names for humans but I can’t think of them. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/32 "2009-03-14T18:33:17Z")
Kz’eerkt, the Kzinti word for “Looks and acts very much like a monkey” In other words, humans. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/33 "2009-03-15T05:47:05Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > (If he can’t get that, he will settle for “poodle: the other white meat”.) I’ve seen that for Gorkamorka, describing the Diggas. I suppose calling humans in general “Diggers” also counts. ---
**Author:** ![unwashed\_brain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a9adbd/32.png) [@unwashed\_brain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unwashed_brain)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/34 "2009-03-15T13:38:21Z")
The huge Teblor race calls humans “children” due to their relative size in Steven Erikson’s “House of Chains”. None of the pejoratives I’ve read thusfar offends me that much. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/35 "2009-03-15T14:32:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > “Squirrels” from David Brin’s Sooner trilogy. irrc this is an insult that misses the spot. The aliens asked the humans to name a Terran animal that chatters and lives in trees. The word they were looking for was monkeys of course. Humans couldn’t care less about being compared to squirrels. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/36 "2009-03-15T17:43:58Z")
> [@](#): > > irrc this is an insult that misses the spot. The aliens asked the humans to name a Terran animal that chatters and lives in trees. The word they were looking for was monkeys of course. Humans couldn’t care less about being compared to squirrels. I think monkeys was considered not insulting enough. In Brin’s universe, chimpanzees had been uplifted and were a sapient race of their own (and I realize chimps aren’t monkeys but we’re talking rhetorical purposes here). Humans were regarded as a threatening race and the other races on the planet wanted to have a term they could use that diminshed the fear. So humans chose squirrels because they were ineffective little nuisances with no connotation of danger. And while it was an intentionally made-up insult, it had through usage acquired a genuine meaning - on that particular planet a human really would be insulted by being called a squirrel. If you were raised in a nice hoon or g’Kek family your mother would spank you and make you apologize if she ever heard you using language like that. ---
**Author:** ![A\_Dodgy\_Dude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a87d85/32.png) [@A\_Dodgy\_Dude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Dodgy_Dude)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/37 "2009-03-15T17:48:03Z")
In The Prophecy both the Archangel Gabriel and Lucifer refer to humans as “talking monkeys.” I also get a kick of that. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391/38 "2009-03-15T18:13:34Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > The Feegles in the Discworld call humans “bigjobs”, and they’re clearly not very impressed with them. I think the dwarfs and trolls might have less than flattering names for humans but I can’t think of them. It helps if you’ve ever seen the Billy Connolly “bigjobs” sketch. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-fictional-anti-human-slurs/489391.md?page=1)