As to OP: decades ago I was told exactly what etymonline.com prints:
Philip Cowen, first editor of “The American Hebrew,” suggests a source in Yiddish kikel “circle.” According to him, Jewish immigrants, ignorant of writing with the Latin alphabet, signed their entry forms with a circle, eschewing the customary “X” as a sign of Christianity. On this theory, Ellis Island immigration inspectors began calling such people kikels, and the term shortened as it passed into general use.
However, that source first gives, citing only “early evidence supports” its etymology, about the “ky” and “ki” endings of names from, presumably, the huge immigration wave following the Pogroms at the turns of the century.
It then gives the Cowen paragraph above. Simple juxtaposition, which doesn’t suggest a strong conviction of the relative merits of the two (parataxis) although subordination is suggested.
FTR, and I think suggestive, is that I was told the Cowen reasoning by a Jew, and to me, another MOT, it seemed acceptable, for reasons that can influence for better or worse all history, not just of words: it is part of a narrative of Jewish history, and actually a quite lengthy one by itself, quite deep and “praiseworthy,” as a cultural topos.
Sounds like folk etymology to me. Why would Ellis Island immigration officials use a Yiddish word?
The Oxford English Dictionary gives “said to be an alteration of -ki (or -ky), a common ending of the personal names of Eastern European Jews who emigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.” (emphasis mine). The Historical Dictionary of American Slang says “origin uncertain, perhaps alteration of Ike, hypocoristic form of male given name Isaac”, although several of its early citations support the -ki theory. It points to a discussion in Mencken American Language Supplement I (1945) but I don’t have access to that book.
And is this word only used in the US? Or can it be traced from American origins ca. 1900 to use elsewhere? Probably not. I’d guess a Germanic origin, just from hunch.
As for the pronunciation issue, that’s not a disqualification. “Kike” would be pronounced with an “i” in “like” by anyone who saw it written, and it’s more than likely it could have changed very quickly. See what happened to Baseball Hall of Famer Kiki Cuyler.
Pronounced “Coy Coy” originally. Few people today pronounce it that way, and it was probably pronounced “Key Key” even when he was playing.
Chaucer used “kike” to mean “stare”. its a guess to say this is the meaning of kike… but it makes sense if it were true… People who couldn’t understand english as they had only learn semetic and their continental language (due to the migration to Iberian peninsula and then migration from there to the north and north east… )… would be sitting there staring , unable to understand the instructions and explanations… While british immigrants would just be relaxed,
and european immigrants may have had more upset disposition… the jews were sort of happy and relaxed, but had nothing else to do but watch.
William the Conqueror brought Jews from Rouen with him. They probably spoke his version of French. Why? Because Jews can learn different languages, just like everybody else.
There were no Jewish communities in England at the time of Chaucer. They had been expelled a hundred years earlier and wouldn’t be allowed to return for 250 years.
Chaucer would have been read by a tiny percentage of elites in England, and by the time the Jews returned his usages were too old fashioned to be used, especially as slang.
Four letter words are common and get reused, often with no connection to a forgotten earlier usage.
This is the most amazing collection of offense, ignorance, non sequiturs, bad history, and sheer unbridled lack of learning that it has been my privilege to read in quite a while. A feat, sir. A veritable feat.
"Kiki" Cuyler’s name was never pronounced "Coy Coy. It wasn’t pronounced “Kee Kee” either, except if you only saw the written nickname and said it that way. Anyone in baseball knew how to pronounce his name. He got it in the minor leagues, either from a manager who stuttered(seriously) or teammates calling out “Cuy” “Cuy” as to who had to catch the fly out.
To put it nicer than Exapno, there is NO possibility that he Middle English words kike/kyke/keke used by Chaucer have any relationship to the term “kike” used around the beginning of the 20th century to disparage foreigners, especially Jewish Imigrants to the US.