Growing up, as I did, in the Newcastle upon Tyne of the 50s and 60s, you always knew you were a 'Geordie' and that people from nearby Sunderland on the river Wear were, well sort of Geordies but not quite. There wasn't a special name for Wear-siders. Latterly the term 'Mackem' has described people from Sunderland and supporters of their football club but only really since the 90s, so a fairly modern development.
Last night's "Balderdash and Piffle" on the BBC sought to track down the earliest recorded written evidence of the word Mackem, and courtesy of the BBC and the Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com/bbcwords/ I reproduce below some extracts from the etymology & definitions of Geordie & Mackem. As for the innate superiority it is claimed Newcastle folk have over their brethren in Sunderland I shall leave it to readers to make up their own mind:
from the OED:
1. (yellow) Geordie: a guinea. (Cf. GEORGE 4b.)
1786
2. a. A coal-pitman. b. A collier-boat. c. (See quot. 1881.)
1876 C. M. DAVIES Unorth. Lond. 353 A "Geordie", or pitman. 1881 RAYMOND Mining Gloss., Geordie, the miners' term for [George] Stephenson's safety-lamp. 1884 W. C. RUSSELL Jack's Courtship xliv, You thought..of the Channel aswarm with just such vessels as she Geordies deep with coal.
3. a. A native or inhabitant of Tyneside.
1866 C. NORDHOFF Young Man-of-War's Man iv. 69 The sailors belonging to the ports on the north-eastern coast of England are called Jordies.
1892 R. O. HESLOP Northumberland Words I. 196 The men who went from the lower Tyneside to work at the pits in South Tynedale were always called Geordies by the people there.
Mackem, n.
DRAFT REVISION Jan. 2006
Prob. with allusion to phrase mack' em and tack 'em and variations thereof, said to refer to the shipbuilding industry of the region, the suggestion being that in Sunderland they make ships (mack 'em) so that others can take them (tack 'em), or, specifically, that the Geordies of Tyneside would then take them to fit them out.
A native or inhabitant of Sunderland or Wearside; a supporter of Sunderland Association Football Club. .
The good citizens of Newcastle are aware and proud of their h-fulness: they believe that this is another instance of their inherent superiority to the 'Mackems' (citizens of Sunderland).
The earliest written record found : 1988 Sunderland Echo 17 Oct. 6/4 Five children and seven grandchildren, all Mack-ems
1 comment:
Hello. Great blog you have here. I will add you to my sidebar tomorrow.
I remember nufc.com were trying to find out when the word Mackem first came into provable existence and I think they suggested that they first only seen it in print in the very early 90's. Don't know though. They also reckoned that the term was an abusive term for them but now they have adopted the name.
Again it's hard to agree or disagree but every word that comes out of most people's mouth around here about Mackems is always an insult. :)
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