The Negro

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 5

The Negro

(Specially written for “The Press" by ARNOLD WALL.)

a dog a bad name”—so you don’t call him “nigger” but he may fairly be a “Negro” with or without a capital letter or a “coloured man.”

More scientifically, or technically, he is a “Hamite,” a descendant of Ham (also Cham or Kham.) The earliest form of the term was “neger,” 1568, pronounced approximately like “eager,” from French “negre.” This was changed to “nigger” about 1786 and was a term of obloquy or discourtesy. Another form was in use especially by sailors in the late 18th or early 19th century. This was “naygur” directly from contemporary French “negre.” I do not find this form recognised in dictionaries.

The polite "coloured man” appeared in 1866. An early avnonym was “black a moor” or. as Sir Walter Raleigh wrote “negro's which we call Blacke Mores.” now black a moor but nearly obsolete. The difference between the Negro and the Moor was not apparent to the men of the 19th century. Here and there we have combinations of “nigger” which are not contemptuous and can give no offence such as the “Nigger Minstrels," usually white men negrified end dating from 1836. The term “nigger-head" dates from 1859 in the United States as a name for various black or dark-coloured roundish objects—a clump or tussock of vegetation as in our swamp sedge or carex in New Zealand, also as a mining term for a boulder in Australia and New Zealand. In the form “negro-head" it is a strong, black tobacco. 1839, and an inferior type of india-rubber, 1881. . Negroid” is, of course, barmlesslv scientific. “NegroPhil” or “phile” has political