daytime dave wrote:Les,
I know the Brit and Limey references. Where does Pom come from?
Supposedly from the days when England used to transport her prisoners/convicts to Australia. It is widely thought to come from
Prisoner
Of
His/
Her
Majesty, although it is unlikely to be true. Acronyms are a fairly recent development and POM, according to the Australian National Museum, only came into existance around 1912, long after transportation had stopped.
Another explanation is that the hot Australian sun turned the newly arrived Brits as red as the inside of a pomegranate, so instead of calling them immigrants, they were jokingly referred to as 'pomigrants', which eventually became pom/pommy. The term is also used by New Zealanders when referring to Brits.
The pomegranate reference could well be correct, because South Africans - especially Afrikaaners - used to (and often still do) refer to the Brits as 'Rooineks', or red necks, as a result of their colour after experiencing the hot South African sun.
