# Origin of Nigger? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 9, 2005, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385 "2005-10-09T07:06:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/21 "2005-10-09T23:10:44Z")
> [@Dr. Rieux](#): > > Arnold claims it means “black plowman.” Maybe, but my German-English dictionary tells me that the word for “plowman” is _Pflüger_, and _Neger_ means Negro. (There is no listing for _Negger_.) ---
**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:** [October 9, 2005, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/22 "2005-10-09T23:22:51Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > I would make this assumption too except that there is no evidence in the OED that niger was ever pronounced with a long eye. All I can find is support that was pronounced similarly to niggar and nigger. > > What evidence do you have that supports your claim? Well, apparently it [rhymes with “tiger”](http://www1.bartleby.com/66/78/40178.html): > [@](#): > > There was a young lady of Niger > Who smiled as she rode on a Tiger; > They came back from the ride > With the lady inside, > And the smile on the face of the Tiger. > > ATTRIBUTION: Cosmo Monkhouse (1840–1901) ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/23 "2005-10-09T23:25:07Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > A professor wrote a brief history of the word a few years ago; I think it was just called “Nigger.” That might help, if you can’t find the answer elsewhere. That book is _Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word_ by Randall Kennedy. Kennedy doesn’t have much to say about the etymology of the word, just noting that it is derived from the Latin _niger_, and citing the _Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang_ and the OED. Kennedy cites a usage of “negars” to describe a shipment of slaves in 1689 and lists a host of other variants. This passage (and footnote) is relevant to the OP: > [@Randall Kennedy](#): > > No one knows precisely when or how “niger” turned derisively into “nigger” and obtained a pejorative meaning[sup]4[/sup]. We do know, however, that by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, “nigger” had already become a familiar and influential insult. > > 4.The linguist Robin Tolmach Lakoff speculates that “nigger” became a slur when users of the term became aware that it was a mispronunciation of “Negro” and decided to continue using the mispronunciation to signal contempt […] But see the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, 2:656, where this theory of mispronunciation is discounted. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/24 "2005-10-09T23:28:08Z")
> [@Biffy the Elephant Shrew](#): > > Kennedy cites a usage of “negars” to describe a shipment of slaves in 1689 Oops, that was 1619. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/25 "2005-10-09T23:44:19Z")
I recently had the opportunity to ask a guy from Ghana a question that had been kicking around in my head for a while: If you call people from Nigeria Nigerians, what do you call people from Niger? (pronounced Nye-jer?) He said that you would call them Nigeriens (pronounced Nye-zhair-ee-ens)–a French pronunciation. He told me that its history as a French colony meant that you would generally pronounce things French-ish-ly. So, the country was generally called “Nee-zhair” among Ghanans. (According to him, “Nye-jer” is also a correct English pronunciation.) Cite: some Ghanan guy I used to work with. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/26 "2005-10-10T00:10:25Z")
> [@Biffy the Elephant Shrew](#): > > Maybe, but my German-English dictionary tells me that the word for “plowman” is _Pflüger_, and _Neger_ means Negro. (There is no listing for _Negger_.) Try it as Schwarzen / Egger. “Eggen” means to harrow or till. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/27 "2005-10-10T00:14:03Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > Try it as Schwarzen / Egger. “Eggen” means to harrow or till. That does make more sense; Schwarzenegger _is_ harrowing. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/28 "2005-10-10T00:16:35Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > “Eggen” means to harrow or till. :smack: Yes, you’re quite right. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/29 "2005-10-10T00:19:00Z")
[QUOTE=Rodgers01A professor wrote a brief history of the word a few years ago; I think it was just called “Nigger.” That might help, if you can’t find the answer elsewhere.[/QUOTE] The complete title was _Nigger: The Strange Case of a Controversial Word._ ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/30 "2005-10-10T00:32:42Z")
Heh heh. Welcome to the Straight Dope, **Debuhdee**. A simple, straightforward question and we’ve already got 28 posts on it, ranging from the pronunciation of geographical names to Proto-Indo-European linguistics to conflicting versions of a book title. Of course, you’re a long-time lurker so you can take the heat. We’ve had **real** newbies in GQ burst out crying and run sobbing from the room when threads get like this. 😉 (And **Eve** : boooooooooo. :)) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/31 "2005-10-10T01:10:29Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > I would make this assumption too except that there is no evidence in the OED that niger was ever pronounced with a long eye. All I can find is support that was pronounced similarly to niggar and nigger. > > What evidence do you have that supports your claim? OK, hold it, I think I have an unsubstantiated idea… When referring to “black”, the _Latin_ word “niger”, by the rules of Latin, would be pronounced with the short-i and the hard-G. And well-educated Englishmen as of, say, the Enlightenment, would use it so in English. _Live_ languages, English included, change pronunciations and ortography. By the 16th century, in Spanish the word had become “negro”. In English it became a bunch of permutations of neger and niger. Meanwhile, the initial suppliers of black slaves to the Brits were Portugese and Spanish traders, thus “Negro” and “Mulatto” become the “official” descriptors of a black and part-black person. Now, and here’s the part I just pulled off thin air, What If **both** the mispronunciation of “negro” AND an archaic usage in the dialects of white folk in the American South, still using the “old English” pronunciation, converge into “ni-G’r” as the “vulgar” way to refer to “negroes”. _By this time_, English ortography has evolved to where to a speaker of Vernacular English unfamiliar with the background, “niger”\* looks\* like something to be pronounced “neye-jer” _even if it weren’t_. So writers start using two g’s, and soon everyone else picks up. The OED does not record "niger’ pronounced the wrong way, because, well, it never really was, it was just “lost” to disuse. As for the river/country… the softening-of-the-g could be a phenomenon resulting from pronunciation changes among the western languages themselves. Some explorer in the 1500s writes about the Niger River, and folks keep reading about it for centuries without hearing it pronounced, eventually we just say it like it looks to us. In Spanish, for instance, for both river and country the “g” is pronounced as an h or soft ch’ as it would for a native-Spanish word. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/32 "2005-10-10T01:14:21Z")
> [@Debuhdee](#): > > Long time lurker, first time poster. > > I’m black, so calm down. With all due respect, I like to believe that if a Doper posted this question and was not black, they would not be warned, banned or in any way villified. We’re all about fighting ignorance, right? 🙂 I’m straight, but believe I’m allowed to post G.Q.'s about other sexual preferences. I’m not sure anyone needed to calm down. I hadn’t noticed the pronounciation of " Nyhee= jehhr " until I heard Anderson Cooper repeat it carefully and with exaggerated crappy faux French accent when he travelled there a few months ago to cover the famine occurring there. I’m 43, and when I was in school my teachers pronounced it " Nie-Jerr ". In a rare mind-bending experience, I’ve been affectionately called “nigger” twice in my life, both times by black men who were happy to see me and were delivering hugs when calling me that. ( One was the rapper Ja Rule… ). Cartooniverse, white Doper at large. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/33 "2005-10-10T02:48:17Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I’m not sure what you mean by “'reverse cause and effect.” Do you mean you think that the Taureg word for “river” is somehow derived from the Latin for “black?” This has been pretty well covered by now, but just to clarify: **tdn** posted that > [@](#): > > The other day I heard an extremely unreliable cite that it came from the country Niger. Which seems intuitive, but is there any connection there at all? I was saying that no evidence exists for this, just the opposite; the river’s name may have come from from niger meaning black. I said that because my edition of the OED makes no mention of the country or river at all. Obviously they’ve corrected that in later editions. However, if niger meaning a black person is dated to 1574 and Niger the river was not referred to until 1600 or later, an odd reversal is still in effect. It’s also odd that Kennedy gives a 1619 date as the seeming first instance. Even my edition of the OED lists “Nigers” in 1574 and “Niger” in 1584; “neegers” in 1587; and “Neegars” in 1597. **JRDelirious** , I’m afraid I can’t credit one iota of your speculations. They all sound wrong to me in every detail of history. **Cartooniverse** , the pronunciation of Niger the country to the French pronunciation has just shifted in recent years, at least in U.S. public announcer-speak. In fact, there was a recent thread about this in GQ: [Who changed the pronunciation of Niger?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=329440) ---
**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:** [October 10, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/34 "2005-10-10T03:44:56Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > I was saying that no evidence exists for this, just the opposite; the river’s name may have come from from niger meaning black. At this point I would have to agree with this, based on the information from **bibliophage, samclem,** and what I found out, although based on **samclem’s** cite the original word would have been _nigris_, the adjectival form (I assume). However, at the same time I would not discount the idea that the original form was the Taureg. It is unlikely any Roman actually reached the Niger itself. Juba most likely knew of the river through word of mouth. By the time the name reached Roman territory it could have become altered to a form which was familiar to Romans, especially if they assumed that it was in reference to a “land of the blacks.” ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/35 "2005-10-10T04:23:41Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > **Cartooniverse** , the pronunciation of Niger the country to the French pronunciation has just shifted in recent years, at least in U.S. public announcer-speak. In fact, there was a recent thread about this in GQ: [Who changed the pronunciation of Niger?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=329440) In fact, while I haven’t read the thread, I never heard it pronounced in the French until the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson thing. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/36 "2005-10-10T14:53:15Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Slight, but interesting, hijack: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last name means “black-black.” Actually, according to Arnold, it translates as “black farmer”. ---
**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:** [October 10, 2005, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/37 "2005-10-10T15:06:36Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Actually, according to Arnold, it translates as “black farmer”. See posts #15 and 26. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/38 "2005-10-10T15:14:58Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > In fact, while I haven’t read the thread, I never heard it pronounced in the French until the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson thing. Now you’ve gone and done it. You’ve written her name. This _could_ cost you your SDMB Security Clearance… :dubious: And then there’s the elephant in the room, [niggardly](http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire091702.asp). ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2005, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/39 "2005-10-10T16:24:59Z")
What was the first contemporary, post WWII song that included the word nigger? I have no idea. My WAG would be ‘Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey’ from Sly & The Family Stone’s 1969 album stand - but there were probably a bunch of white folk singers who used the word earlier in that decade… ---
**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:** [October 10, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385/40 "2005-10-10T16:41:41Z")
> [@JohnBckWLD](#): > > What was the first contemporary, post WWII song that included the word nigger? Not sure if it’s post WWII or if it would be regarded as “contemporary,” but Leadbelly’s _Bourgeois Blues_ includes the following lines: > [@](#): > > Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs > We heard the white man say I don`t want no niggers up there > Lord, in a bourgeois town > Uhm, bourgeois town > I got the bourgeois blues > Gonna spread the news all around > > Well, them white folks in Washington they know how > To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow > Lord, it is a bourgeois town > Uhm, the bourgeois town > I got the bourgeois blues > Gonna spread the news all around [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-nigger/325385.md?page=3)