Talk:Wog

Overview

"The word wog is a vile, vulgar, racist slur popularized and first used in England. The best known sentence employing this put-down brims with political irony: “The wogs begin at Calais.” George Wigg, a Labour party MP, said it in 1945 to characterize and satirize the attitude of British Tories to foreigners. Calais was and sometimes still is the first port of France that a vacationing Brit encounters when venturing into continental Europe. The sentiment made the British laugh and fitted their racism perfectly, with its implication that all non-British persons in the world constituted 'a bunch of bloody wogs.' " Acknowlegement and thanks to Bill Casselman for permission to use the excerpt above. www.billcasselman.com

(William Gordon Casselman is a Canadian author of 11 books on etymology, Canadian language, and folk sayings, including "A Dictionary of Medical Derivations:The True Meaning of Medical Words.")

• Herewith a historical account of Wigg's wog coinage:
• It was easier for Labour to acquire the sinews of power than it was to exercise it. In 1945, Attlee inherited all the pre-war problems of the Middle East: the worsening Arab Jewish conflict; the simmering resentment of the Egyptians against alien domination; and the widespread feeling that Britain was the greatest hindrance to Arab national aspirations and unity. Labour was instinctively sympathetic to liberation movements; it was an internationalist, progressive party which thought itself in harmony with the trends of the modern world. The Conservatives were locked into the past and hosts to atavistic concepts of racial superiority and thinly disguised xenophobia. During a debate in which the subject of the Burmese came up, the volatile George Wigg shouted at the Tory benches, ‘The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all “wogs”. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [Churchill] thinks that the “wogs” begin at Calais.’
• —Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of British Empire, St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 559-560
• Larvatus 08:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)larvatus

The word 'wog' is still quite offensive to a lot of people in Australia (depending on context and who is uttering the word) – particularly people of non-anglo origin who grew up in the 50's 60's and 70's in Australia. In those times the word was usually used as a racist slur or insult. Its use was usually preceded by a word such as "dirty", "greasy" or an expletive of choice such as, "f%#*ing".

In fact, in Australia, the word is still used in that way if someone wants to insult someone of Greek, Italian, Arabic etc origin. For example, preceding the Sydney race riots of December 2005 text messages were sent that said things like, "Tommorrow is bash a wog day".

Clearly, the word 'wog' has a long history as a derogatory, demeaning and racist slur in Australia. For many people, it still retains that meaning, so it should be used with caution! To the younger generation of non-anglo saxons it seems to be less offensive, but the context of its use should always be considered. Some people think that its meaning is changing and that it may be losing some of its negative connotations.

False Origins of the Word Wog

" Wog is considered by some people to be an acronym, standing for such phrases as:

Wily Oriental Gentleman

Worthy Oriental Gentleman

Westernized Oriental Gentleman

Wonderful Oriental Gentleman

Working On Government Service

That last unproven example was supposedly printed on the back of shirts worn by Suez Canal workers. Yet no proof, not a scrap of evidentiary historical residua exists to support these claims. No Suez shirt bearing such a phrase has ever come to auction.

In all the files about all the various insulting names under which oriental persons have laboured throughout western history, there is no record whatsoever of documents, letters, artifacts or memorabilia with such phrases short-formed. No person has ever brought forward and presented as evidence a single item with 'Worthy Oriental Gentleman' stamped upon it. Not once."

Acknowlegement and thanks to Bill Casselman for permission to use the excerpt above. www.billcasselman.com (William Gordon Casselman is a Canadian author of 11 books on etymology, Canadian language, and folk sayings, including "A Dictionary of Medical Derivations:The True Meaning of Medical Words.")

Suez Canal

It's worth mentioning that the British weren't involved with the building of the Suez Canal - that option is only the most believable in relative terms, since none of the acronym derivations make sense except as myth making after the fact. PML.

On the origin question, it is perhaps interesting that in the seagoing use polywogs are "accepted into" society as shellbacks. This may be the origin of the "not one of us" meaning of wog. Or not. I've no data beyond noting the convenient coincidence of meaning. JamesDay 05:53, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Greek?

From Aussie movies/TV, I got the the impression a wog was a ?Greek? or something. Any Australians want to clarify in article? Tristanb

Italians and Greeks, as the article suggests, are most commonly referred to as 'wogs', however because of Australia's large Greek population, it's easy to see how they could appear to be the only ones who are called 'wogs'. Also, I can't reference any movies where an Italian is referred to as a 'wog'--but I assure you that when it comes down to it, Greeks aren't the only ones to whom the term has been applied. Vague Rant 09:55, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

My school, in a highly Italian area of Perth, was jokingly called 'wog central' because of the high numbers of Italians. The main reason people associate 'wogs' more with Greeks than Italians is 'The Wog Boy' (A film by Greek-Australian Nick Giannopolous). - Mark 11:51, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Folklore

I agree with PML: let's cut this folklore out of the entry, since it is as bogus as any of the other attempts to construct etymologies out of supposed acronyms; see "posh," "cop," and "tip," for some other , equally bad examples. Italo Svevo 012:06, 17 April 2004 (UTC)

Acronyms & variants

"Worthy Oriental Gentleman" or variants thereof. I understood it was "Western Oriental Gentleman" (Some one from the Indian subcontinent or there abouts) instead of Eastern Oriental Gentleman (someone from China or there abouts). It is very rare that the term is used as an insult about people from the far east, it is much more common as an insult for people from the subcontinent and near east. [1] – Philip Baird Shearer 13:21, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rarity?

I've just come from Talk:Golliwogg, where it's being claimed by one editor that 'golliwog' is used today as a racist epithet, and refuses even to allow that such use is rare. I've come here to find it said that the use of 'wog' is rare; would that that were the case, but I've heard it all too frequently (though admittedly less commonly than in the sixties and seventies — my memory doesn't go further back than that). What's the basis for the claim about its rarity? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:34, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup Notes

Some notes on my changes:

• I agree with the professor, wog is commonly used in the UK. Whoever put that in there has lived a sheltered life.
• Shouting anything loudly in public is offensive. Just a simple point saying that it is offensive and to be used with caution was all that was needed. I know this all too well as an Australian in London, using the term freely and getting strange looks.

It's often used by ethnic Australians (especially younger generations) to describe their situation, as ethnics in a English culture. It remains slang, though and isn't used formally.

Darkov 16:23, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some notes on my changes: I removed "(Sand Wogs)" as a qualifer in for "Arabs" in the list of ethinicites the word is applied to in Australia as the term "sand wogs" is EXTREMELY rarely used in common parlance. If anything, I suspect it was an Australian reinvention of the term "Sand Niggers" as used in the US by a similarly bigoted minority, and would confuse the general meaning of "Wog" as applied in Australia by the populace at large. (Guest)

Comments

Author of the Wog FAQ here. You've ended up with a pretty accurate set of meanings for this much travelled word, congratulations!
I'm reasonably sure that 'wog' in most of its meanings derives from 'pollywog', an obsolete alternative for 'tadpole'. The UK racial Wog may be an exception: Partridge missed the naval connection and all other dictionaries have followed him, but he could be right. Perhaps it would be helpful to rearrange the various meanings in their chronological order:

• Naval pollywog > wog early 19th century?
• Bengali bureaucrat late 19th century
• Australian illness 19th century?
• Golliwogg 1880s
• Racial Indian early 20th century
• Racial Arab First World War?
• Scientology 1950s
• Australian racial 1950s

The maritime Wog is certainly derogatory, pollywogs have various humiliations performed upon them by shellbacks. It is so far as I can ascertain limited to navies and is not used on civilian vessels.

--Hartley Patterson 19:39, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Would someone like Egon Krenz be considered a "wog" in Australia

I'm just wondering if someone like Egon Krenz would be considered a wog in Australia, even though he is not southern European. For anyone who doesn't know Egon Krenz hes german but, he has the skin color of a light arab (hes darker than 99.5% of southern europeans).

If Egon Krenz has the skin color of a light-skinned Arab, then he wouldn't be darker than 99.5% of Southern Europeans (Mediterraneans). Most of them have fair to dark skin and hair like all Mediterranean people including Arabs. And therefore, I'd sure doubt that he would be considered a wog. - Avery Long-Wiener

Egon Krenz ist nicht ein Wog. Er ist ein Roter!

In all seriousness, this is an interesting question, even if Krenz is looking quite pale these days (no doubt a result of his incarceration). While the crude term 'wog' was applied in a rather arbitrary manner to darker Southern Europeans, it's unlikely that Krenz would have received that label due to his German ethnicity. However, it does raise the question of whether the term 'wog' could be applied to darker Central Europeans. Does anybody know if Poles or Hungarians, for example, were labelled 'wogs' at any stage? 202.72.148.102

Poles are lighter than Germans, and Southern Germans look a lot like Nothern Italians

Native Americans

I've just removed this one-sentence section:

== As a racial epithet against Native Americans ==

"Wog" is used as a term of abuse against some Native Americans, including but not limited to members of the Ojibway Nation in Minnesota and perhaps elsewhere.

First, is there any ground for the claim? Could someone provide a source? Secondly, if there is a source, doesn't this need to be in the main section, not a separate section? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

As a Minnesotan, I have never heard this. I've lived alongside one of the largest Ojibwe reservations too. --24.31.29.171 05:23, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

A question what about the fair skinned Italians about 75% at least of the Italians, light eyed (40% of the Italians), and blondes (15% of the Italians). Are they call wogs too? Lots of Italians are whiter looking than some English. Trust me I have been in both places!

August 2006(UTC)

Wogs = snot

In my family growing up in Melbourne, Australia in the 1970s we used the term "wogs" as a euphemism or childish word for "snot" or "nasal mucus". Was this used by others too? I never hear it anymore. — Hippietrail 17:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

My dad uses it to refer to a head-cold (brisbane australia) Cadmiumcandy 14:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Scientology replaced

Where did the scientology meaning go? Replaced anyway. --Hartley Patterson 23:52, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Edited again to remove an error - unless someone can show otherwise, I think the Church of Scientology is unaware of the maritime meaning. Plus a quote. --Hartley Patterson 19:24, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

'Derivative' subparagraph removed. I can only think of one critic of the Church of Scientology who has attempted to turn 'wog' into a compliment, the rest treat it as a stick with which to beat the Church. --Hartley Patterson 01:38, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

no it was to my knolidge someone remaking the scientology deffinition to something good if you want to find out more about that deffination go to the refferances and look at the iptv show its one of my favorites and thats why i placed it there well that and it goes with the derrivitave deff. --stapuft 22:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

clog wogs and frog wogs

From the article :

• It may occasionally extend to people from other parts of Europe. Migrants from the Netherlands sometimes refer to themselves as clog wogs and some from France refer to themselves as frog wogs.

Is this a joke? Is there any source that can be provided for this? --Alexxx1 ^{(talk/contribs)} 22:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I have heard the term clog wog used by at least one Dutch person in Australia. However it is not a wisespread or frequently-heard term. Frog wog I have never heard of. Possibly this is just a conflation from clog wog? Asa01 23:42, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe it is a conflation. Someone of French descent, or at least French name and email handle, emailed the Help Desk asking for it to be added. I have no attachment to its inclusion. Feel free to delete it if you feel it is appropriate. WAvegetarian ^(talk) (email) ^(contribs) 10:55, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Wogism

A movement to reassert unity between the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern communities in Australia. In an effort to form one common identity. "Cinnamon".

The Term Wog in 2005

The term wog, historically meant people who were Italian, Greek, Portuguese, etc. but Australians associate Wog with people who are Arab especially after the riots. It is used affectionally in Australia amongst southern Europeans (i.e. to each other). Depending on context, it can still be considered a racist word by people of British/Irish origin.

However, I have noticed that if it used to describe an Arab, they take it extremely offensive, and Australians no longer call Italians, Greeks, Portuguese 'wogs' anymore, but those of Lebanese or Arabic origins because they are non-European, so I added that it "Historically impled Italians and Greeks."

I really don't find the term wog offensive and I freely use it to describe almost anyone strange looking when I travel throughout the world. It certainly gets less of a reaction than "dumbass" or "fuckwit", which have more than once nearly provoked fisticuffs. I think a survey should be done to determine just how many people truly find the word offensive. I suspect the result would be surprisingly small.

Dunno where you get that from mate— if I hear someone say "wog" I assume they're referring to someone of Italian or Greek descent. What do others think? --Russell E 22:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Wog is always applied to people of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance. Most Latin-Australians are of Italian descent as most Arab-Australians are of Lebanese descent.They along with Greek-Australian and Iranian-Australians take the term equally offensive depending on whether you use the term to incite violence or not, like what happened during the riots. Calling a Mediterranean or Middle Easterner a 'wog' is like calling them a terrorist, gangster, outlaw, spy, wop, or camel jockey, in the derogatory sense. However, the term can also be used as a symbol of ethnic pride, denoting those from countries which are considered to be part of the cradle of Western Civilization. So Greeks, Latins, Persians, and Arabs don't always take offense of the term, especially when used amoungst themselves. - Avery Long-Wiener

How is calling people "Wogs" anything like calling people "Terrorists"?--Greasysteve13 09:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Style Issues

rarely considered to be the sort of slur or insult that it remains in other parts of the Anglosphere

I don't think it exists at all in US-English (maybe not Canadian-English either). Where exactly is it used? Is it limited to England and Australia? NZ? --24.31.29.171 05:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

It is sometimes used in the US, more frequently than in the past, I believe. IronDuke 02:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

It's also in common usage in some areas of Canada, primarily as the version derived from the Scientology definition of "wog". --SpecOp Macavity 17:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Alternate deffination of wog

Regarding the continued addition of the "Alternate deffination of wog" (sic), please provide reliable sources for the material, bearing in mind Wikipedia:Reliable_sources. Please note, especially, the following salient points from that policy:

"A primary source is a document or person providing direct evidence of a certain state of affairs; in other words, a source very close to the situation you are writing about. The term most often refers to a document produced by a participant in an event or an observer of that event."

"In general, Wikipedia articles should not depend on primary sources but rather on reliable secondary sources who have made careful use of the primary-source material." (emphasis added)

"A secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources. Secondary sources produced by scholars and published by scholarly presses are carefully vetted for quality control and can be considered authoritative."

"The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit in question, and any unsourced material may be removed by any editor."

"Check multiple independent sources"

"Publications with teams of fact-checkers, reporters, editors, lawyers, and managers — like the New York Times or The Times of London — are likely to be reliable, and are regarded as reputable sources for the purposes of Wikipedia. At the other end of the reliability scale lie personal websites, weblogs (blogs), bulletin boards, and Usenet posts, which are not acceptable as sources. Rare exceptions may be when a well-known professional person or acknowledged expert in a relevant field has set up a personal website using his or her real name. Even then, we should proceed with caution, because the information has been self-published, which means it has not been subject to any independent form of fact-checking."

"The policy page that governs the use of sources is Wikipedia:Verifiability. About self-published sources, which includes books published by vanity presses, and personal websites, it says: "Sources of dubious reliability are sources with a poor reputation for fact-checking, or with no fact-checking facilities or editorial oversight... Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources."

etc., etc.

For the purposes of this issue, I believe that the only sources that have been suggested so far are a wiki and a personal website. Both constitutes unreliable "primary sources".

Please indicate below if there are any other sources. I have no ax to grind here, other than trying to make Wikipedia as a realiable encyclopedia. -- Mwanner | Talk 23:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I have a few comments to make regarding certain inaccuracies in Mwanner's statement above. As I've just told him, the primary source is not a personal website. It's a website concerning a particular program produced by RantMedia, and is owned and operated by the staff of RantMedia.

(He has also attempted to discredit it by pointing out that "OMG there's a link to a page where you can buy stuff! It's commercial!" and "OMG there's a link to forums! It's unreliable!" (My response to this was basically "A single link does not a commercial site make, and those forums are there so that people can discuss the RantMedia shows.")

As for the second, granted, it uses wiki software.

HOWEVER! It's also owned and operated by a group of people who consider themselves "wogs" in the derivative sense I (and others) have been mentioning, and it's their primary channel for sharing useful information and their takes on what the term "wog" means to them. As such, I believe it to be a reliable source in this case. --SpecOp Macavity 18:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

You're right about the partially commercial nature of the site not being relevent to the issue of reliability-- I do a lot of spam fighting here, so I'm probably oversensitive to commercial content, but it has nothing to do with whether a site can be taken to be a reliable source, so I apologise for muddying the water with that issue. I still see the site as essentially a personal site, centered on the views of a single individual, and I still have a major issue with the lack of a textual source for the purported definition. But I like your proposal, below, assuming such a source can be located. -- Mwanner | Talk 20:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. - Looking over the "History" page for the article proper, I've come up with a potential solution to the problem.

Place the following text in the section about the Scientology definition:

There is also a derivative definition which has become more commonn in recent years, thanks to its use by the host of Patrolling with Sean Kennedy. This definition can be found here.

With the work "here" being a link to the definition in question, which would be placed in a suitable location on the Wikipedia page for Sean Kennedy.

Thoughts?

--SOM

My thought is that even if Sean Kennedy and every regular listener of Patrolling with Sean Kennedy uses "wog" in this fashion, that is still a very small number of people (perhaps smaller than Sean Kennedy and his listeners are disposed to realize.) This private attempt to redefine the term may be quite relevant to Sean Kennedy, and worth mentioning there. It may, at some future point, become widespread enough to be worth mentioning here -- but the evidence does not indicate that it has, as the references provided are, essentially, self-publications. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I dunno-- I'd be all set to say "Sure, good solution" if there were a single, non-wiki, text source for the definition. Moving it to Kennedy's article solves (to my mind) the reliable source problem, since clearly his site is "official" for facts relating to him. But the absense (so far) of any textual source troubles me. Is it out there somewhere, waiting to be cited? -- Mwanner | Talk 20:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

im one of the ones that continue to place that deffinition on the wog page and i think that som has a good idea there stapuft 00:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

A piece of trivia

If the word 'wog' had not been in long-standing offensive use, it might have become the singular form of WAGs - as the singular would surely be 'wife or girlfriend'. Is it worth mentioning at the bottom of the article that this might have happened, and that the word's offensive usage is probably the reason it didn't? Jess Cully 13:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Which Australians are Wogs?

This continual changing of the list of countries of origin and/or races for those Australians who are called 'wogs' is getting silly. We've even had the Macedonian political correctness brigade visiting! Would it be possible for you Aussies to settle on some more general terms that didn't need to be changed so often? :-)

As a suggestion, you might say that 'Wog' came back to Australia after WWII as a rude word for darker skinned people, was applied to immigrants from SE Europe as they are darker skinned than those of British descent, and has since adapted to current events to include people from the Levant. --Hartley Patterson 19:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Coud you just maybe add to the list that the word's aplication is variable? Possibly the variation is regional, e.g. applied differently in Melbourne to Sydney. Cadmiumcandy 12:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

As threatened and with yet more nationalities being added to an already overlong list I've deleted the lot and replaced with regional terms, plus removed some vandalism. --Hartley Patterson 13:39, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

WOG poultry

Yikes! I thought this had to be a joke but no, googling generated lots of seriously commercial webpages that use WOG as an acronym for 'without giblets'. What we need is a stable reference, which none of these are. --Hartley Patterson 21:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)