# In British slang, are people from India included in 'Pakis'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 17, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355 "2020-08-17T23:57:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2020, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/41 "2020-08-19T13:51:22Z")
It’s similar to the term muslim in the US; in that the kind of person that would use it as a pejorative is usually utterly ignorant of geography, history and religion and therefore might shout it at an insult at someone very obviously Sikh. (Although, to be clear, “Muslim” is of course not inherently offensive, whereas “Paki” is only used as a racist pejorative in British English.) > [@Mangetout](#): > > It’s an interesting problem on an international message board - so I can be having a conversation with someone who can casually use a word that I am conditioned to avoid. I’ve had to learn at least one of those. Growing up in the UK, the word “oriental” was the standard way to refer to what we now call “east asian”, as “asian” was mostly used to refer to the Indian subcontinent. It was much later in life that I discovered the term is somewhat offensive to Asian Americans, so I had to scrub it from my dictionary. But, twist ending: here in China, lots of things are named “Oriental” or the Chinese translation of same (东方). ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/42 "2020-08-21T08:17:18Z")
It was on this board, a year or so back, that I first discovered that “Oriental” was an unacceptable description for East Asians. If I type the word into Google, I get thousands of hits, including a good many Chinese restaurants, so it seems unlikely that Chinese people find it offensive. It seems similar to the modern problem with gender - at one time we were all either gay or straight, now there is a whole rainbow of descriptors. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/43 "2020-08-21T10:23:59Z")
I don’t think the problem is that a Chinese would find the term more or less offensive than would an Algerian. It’s more that the whole concept of Orientalism has been critically reassessed; even the term itself indicates a default Western (heh) perspective. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/44 "2020-08-21T15:32:22Z")
The offensive descriptor for anyone not white - ‘WOG’ was coined, or at least widely used, by British troops based in the Middle East. There is a wide held belief that it stood for Wily Oriental Gentleman, but that is highly unlikely (a backronym?). Wikipedia suggests that it comes from ‘gollywog’ a black-faces character in children’s books in the late 19th century. Wherever it came from, it is highly offensive. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/45 "2020-08-21T17:16:27Z")
I have some pictures of myself and my brother about age 5 holding our Golliwogs - homemade dolls. Mister Golliwog was a cartoonish blackface wool doll character in the British children’s book series about Noddy. I was amazed to see one actually for sale in a London toy store around 2000. I remember an article from the early 90’s about life on North Sea oil platforms, and the one south asian worker in the group photo was wearing a cap that had written on it “I’m a happy wog!” I did not realize that it referred to brown people, not black. “Jap” was considered an insult, IIRC, even back in the Watergate hearings when another senator referred to Sen. Inouye as “the little Jap” and got raked over the coals for it. “Paki” was the ignorant person’s go-to description for any south-Asian in Canada going back to about when they started immigrating in larger numbers in the 70’s. I assume the term was imported from Britain. Of course, anyone that ignorant did not fully appreciate geography anyway, and like more modern prejudices, even people like Sri Lankans and Iranians were slurred that way. I suspect for the same reason as in Britain - Pakistan being poorer, more immigrants arrived from there than from India initially. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/46 "2020-08-21T18:12:20Z")
As I understand it, “Oriental” is offensive when used to describe a person. But cuisine, carpetry, ceramicware, etc. can all be described as “Oriental”. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/47 "2020-08-21T18:13:17Z")
Kind of like “Scotch.” ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/48 "2020-08-22T00:08:41Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > “Jap” was considered an insult, IIRC, even back in the Watergate hearings when another senator referred to Sen. Inouye as “the little Jap” and got raked over the coals for it. Before that, Vice President Spiro Agnew caught flak for [referring to a Japanese-American reporter as “the fat Jap.”](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/agnew.htm) This was shortly after he referred to Polish-Americans as “polacks.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/49 "2020-08-25T19:37:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > As I understand it, “Oriental” is offensive when used to describe a person. But cuisine, carpetry, ceramicware, etc. can all be described as “Oriental”. Yes, that’s my understanding now too. But what I’m saying is, growing up in the UK, if someone had said the sentence “I met with an oriental chap earlier” was offensive, genuinely my response might have been “What, _chap_ is offensive?” And, IIRC, at that time, (south-)east asian wasn’t used much in common parlance, so “oriental” was playing an important role in the language. I’m not saying any of this makes it OK for someone to use that word to describe a person now. All I’m saying is that it is not just that our culture becomes more woke, but in some cases it’s about words themselves shifting in meaning, or having a different context in different countries. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/50 "2020-08-25T22:45:27Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I think it worth mentioning that there are supermarkets all over the Midlands called Pak Stores As a Midlander (Warwickshire), that’s news to me. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/51 "2020-08-25T22:49:48Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > > [@Chronos](#): > > > > As I understand it, “Oriental” is offensive when used to describe a person. But cuisine, carpetry, ceramicware, etc. can all be described as “Oriental”. > > Yes, that’s my understanding now too. > > But what I’m saying is, growing up in the UK, if someone had said the sentence “I met with an oriental chap earlier” was offensive, genuinely my response might have been “What, _chap_ is offensive?” > And, IIRC, at that time, (south-)east asian wasn’t used much in common parlance, so “oriental” was playing an important role in the language. > > I’m not saying any of this makes it OK for someone to use that word to describe a person now. > All I’m saying is that it is not just that our culture becomes more woke, but in some cases it’s about words themselves shifting in meaning, or having a different context in different countries. Indeed. I’ve adjusted my language to never use it as you never know, so Oriental is falling out of favour beyond the US. Amusingly, this confused my Hongkonger girlfriend that had never heard such things and had no issue with the word being used to describe people. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/52 "2020-08-26T03:15:12Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > > [@bob\_2](#): > > > > I think it worth mentioning that there are supermarkets all over the Midlands called Pak Stores > > As a Midlander (Warwickshire), that’s news to me. I’m from Birmingham and wasn’t aware of that either, but on [googling](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pak+supermarket&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjal-bm8bfrAhVGXJoKHbakCTEQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=pak+supermarket&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIGCAAQBxAeULaKC1j_pQtg_6gLaABwAHgAgAGKBYgBtx6SAQczLTQuNC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=0dFFX5rrOMa46QS2yaaIAw&bih=625&biw=1360&safe=off&hl=en) it seems to be a legit chain. I would think it is a new chain of stores, as I know several of the locations shown and they did not have a store there a few years ago. It doesn’t have that much relevance to the issue of the word “paki” though. As noted previously, pejoratives are a matter of culture and history, and don’t necessarily have to make sense etymologically. “Paki” is meant as a pejorative and causes great offense. “Pak”, at least right now, basically isn’t a word, but might simply make people think of Pakistan. The fact they are one letter apart is irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/53 "2020-08-26T04:45:54Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > Indeed. I’ve adjusted my language to never use it as you never know, so Oriental is falling out of favour beyond the US. Amusingly, this confused my Hongkonger girlfriend that had never heard such things and had no issue with the word being used to describe people. One influential book critiquing Orientalism was published in 1978: > **[Orientalism (book)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book))** > > Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, whic... and even before that time some universities had renamed their faculty of Oriental Studies to a different name, like Asian Studies. I am not an expert, but I gather the name is by some people considered old-fashioned and/or to have baggage associated to imperialism or other undesirable traditions. It may not be universally or extremely offensive, but the _Oxford Dictionary of English_ warns that > The term oriental has an out-of-date feel as a term denoting people from Asia; it tends to be associated with a rather offensive stereotype of the people and their customs as inscrutable and exotic. So, I don’t know, but if someone is from let’s say Hong Kong I don’t see why we wouldn’t personally describe him or her as such rather than as an “Oriental” or an “Asian” for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/54 "2020-08-26T04:50:38Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > “Pak”, at least right now, basically isn’t a word [Sure it’s a word.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%BE%D8%A7%DA%A9) Pak = pure ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/55 "2020-08-26T07:29:49Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > > [@amanset](#): > > > > > [@bob\_2](#): > > > > > > I think it worth mentioning that there are supermarkets all over the Midlands called Pak Stores > > > > As a Midlander (Warwickshire), that’s news to me. > > I’m from Birmingham and wasn’t aware of that either, but on [googling](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pak+supermarket&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjal-bm8bfrAhVGXJoKHbakCTEQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=pak+supermarket&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIGCAAQBxAeULaKC1j_pQtg_6gLaABwAHgAgAGKBYgBtx6SAQczLTQuNC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=0dFFX5rrOMa46QS2yaaIAw&bih=625&biw=1360&safe=off&hl=en) it seems to be a legit chain. I would think it is a new chain of stores, as I know several of the locations shown and they did not have a store there a few years ago. > > It doesn’t have that much relevance to the issue of the word “paki” though. As noted previously, pejoratives are a matter of culture and history, and don’t necessarily have to make sense etymologically. “Paki” is meant as a pejorative and causes great offense. “Pak”, at least right now, basically isn’t a word, but might simply make people think of Pakistan. The fact they are one letter apart is irrelevant. Yeah, my issue isn’t that it exists it is that it is “all over the Midlands”, thus implying they are super common. Actually finding how many there are is difficult as I can’t find a website for the chain. According to Google there are five of them. Four in Birmingham and one in Leicester. According to [192.com](http://192.com) there are eleven, all but two in Birmingham. Maybe my standards are different, but that doesn’t feel like “all over the Midlands”. It feels a bit like when people claim that they “say ‘mom’ in the Midlands” when really it is basically the Black Country, ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/56 "2020-08-26T08:10:24Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > One influential book critiquing Orientalism was published in 1978: I’m not at all surprised that there’s an (American) book that old criticizing the use of “Oriental”. This is insufficient to refute the idea that the word may not have been a known pejorative (either for speaker or listener), in much of the english-speaking world. > [@](#): > > So, I don’t know, if someone is from let’s say Hong Kong I don’t see why we wouldn’t personally describe him or her as such rather than as an “Oriental” or an “Asian” for that matter. Makes as much sense as saying that if someone is from Wan Chai district, I should say as such, and not lump them in as being from Hong Kong. There are lots of times where I don’t know someone’s exact place of origin yet, or where I need to refer to people from a region collectively. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/57 "2020-08-26T08:11:19Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > [Sure it’s a word.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%BE%D8%A7%DA%A9) > > Pak = pure Not sure if this was meant tongue-in-cheek, but in context I obviously meant the word “Pak” has no meaning in (British) English. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/58 "2020-08-26T09:29:28Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Makes as much sense as saying that if someone is from Wan Chai district, I should say as such, and not lump them in as being from Hong Kong. > There are lots of times where I don’t know someone’s exact place of origin yet, or where I need to refer to people from a region collectively. You are right, but if it was a friend of mine, I would normally introduce my friend from Shanghai, or tell you she is Chinese, rather than specify she comes from the East. The words Orient/Oriental are evidently not considered super-offensive, since they are still used in academia and elsewhere, but I was just pointing out that opinions like those in that book have been out for a while now, they are not universal in the English-speaking world and Said in particular has received a lot of criticism. ---
**Author:** ![paulmarkj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@paulmarkj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paulmarkj)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/59 "2020-08-26T09:50:00Z")
What I find odd is that the shortened word Pak is acceptable and is used. For example, in cricket, the Pakistan team is often referred to as PAK. For eample, [here](https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/_/id/19495/pakistan-in-england-2020). This seems to enforce the offensive term rather than diminish it. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355/60 "2020-08-26T10:04:34Z")
OK, all over was clearly an exaggeration but they do exist. Back in the 90s, when I was commuting to Birmingham, I drove past one twice a day. It struck a jarring note to me even then. I worked in a factory that was a microcosm of Britain’s colonial past. In my small department I had Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims from the subcontinent, an HK Chinese, several West Indians and one guy from the Black Country, apart from a couple of Irish and some native Brummies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-british-slang-are-people-from-india-included-in-pakis/918355.md?page=4)