Kiwis, Poms and Canucks: Where the Nicknames Actually Come From

I am, apparently, a Pom. So my Australian and New Zealand friends keep cheerfully informing me, anyway. I’ve never been quite sure where the term comes from, why I’m meant to find it offensive (I don’t), or why my Kiwi friends are perfectly happy being called Kiwis while I’m supposed to bristle at Pom. Naturally, I assumed the answers were to be found on the internet, so to Google I turned. While I was there, I had a poke around a couple of other nationality nicknames as well.

Three of the better-known ones came up: Kiwi, Canuck and Pom. Plus a quick word at the end on Limey and Rosbif, since I felt I owed those a mention too.

Why New Zealanders Are Called Kiwis

A Kiwi, depending on the subject being discussed, is a bird native to New Zealand, a fruit that is grown in New Zealand, or a person that comes from New Zealand. And unlike the term Pom, Kiwis are more than happy to refer to themselves as such.

It turns out that in the case of the Kiwi, the bird came before the person, which in turn came before the fruit. The Kiwi bird, a national and easily recognisable symbol of New Zealand, features prominently on the New Zealand armed forces symbols, and it was from this that the nickname arose. To start with it only referred to those people in uniform, but by the end of the Second World War it had become associated with pretty much everyone from New Zealand.

Perhaps having the name associated with both a unique national symbol and the armed forces has meant that it has been widely and proudly adopted in New Zealand as a way to identify oneself as being from New Zealand. It’s not seen as a slur.

You are probably also wondering, having named both a bird and a people with this term, surely a fruit was going a bit far? Well, it turns out that this was all just a marketing ploy. Once the term Kiwi was in common parlance and associated with New Zealand, rebranding the Chinese gooseberry (as the kiwi fruit was originally known) in order to ship more of the product was almost inevitable. This happened back in 1962, and the name has stuck pretty much ever since. China actually grows by far the most kiwi fruit these days, well over half the global total, but New Zealand remains the country most associated with it, with Zespri (the New Zealand growers’ co-operative) the biggest single exporter in the world.

Why Canadians Are Called Canucks

I hadn’t really heard the term Canuck being applied to Canadians much until I started reading travel blogs, and I noticed some of the bigger names in Canadian travel blogging labelling themselves with this term. A bit more reading later, and I realised it’s an incredibly ubiquitous term for a person of Canadian origin, and as with Kiwi, is more often than not a positive label. The Vancouver Canucks NHL ice hockey team carry the name officially, and once you start looking it shows up all over the place: comic books, songs, other sports teams, newspaper columns.

Unlike Kiwi, however, the origins of the term are not quite so clear cut. One widely accepted explanation is that it derived from various mispronunciations of the French phrase “quelle canule”, which was in common use back in the 1770s, and meant “what a bore!” The mispronunciation of the word canule is often attributed to it being cold, with the resulting shivering playing havoc with vocal capabilities. That, or French with an American accent is just a bit tricky to understand.

Another theory is that it is a happy mash up of the words “Canadian” and “inuk”, an Inuit word meaning “man”. Which seems a bit more plausible to me. Still, I reckon Canuck is a pretty funky nickname.

Why the British Are Called Poms

The nickname ‘Pom’, which is used mostly by Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans to describe folks of British origin, generally doesn’t sit too well with most British people, although it’s not totally clear why. We are, after all, happy as a nation to label ourselves with all kinds of weird regional names, such as Geordie, Mackem, Brummie and Scouser. (For those of you not familiar with the UK, those refer to folks from Newcastle, Sunderland, Birmingham and Liverpool respectively.)

Some research has indicated that the origins of the term are a little bit vague. It is possibly a reference to the convict history of Australia, where P.O.M.E may have stood for Prisoner of Mother England. Another theory has it that it is a shortened version of Pomegranate, with the idea being that most British people take on the hue of a Pomegranate when exposed to the Australian climate. Further credence is added to this theory when you take into account the fact that Pomegranate was once Australian rhyming slang for immigrant. The Australian National Dictionary Centre is blunt about it: there’s no evidence whatever for the POME acronym theory. They date the actual path to around 1912, when pomegranate was Australian rhyming slang for immigrant, then got abbreviated to pom and pommy soon after.

These days the term Pom is largely an acceptable label, and if not acceptable, at least inevitable if you are of British origin, and from what I can tell, there is no malice intended in the nickname, at least not from anyone I have met. Taking the piss, after all, is a traditional and more than acceptable Australian and Kiwi pastime.

The Australian advertising authority confirmed this view in 2006, ruling that Pom was an acceptable label for us Brits, and the New Zealand advertising authority went the same way in 2010. So I guess it’s going to stick for a while to come. Still, it could be worse: I reckon Pom is somewhat better than Limey or Rosbif, which are other rather unfortunate nicknames for us Brits abroad.

What do you think of these nicknames? Are you proud to be labelled a Pom, a Kiwi, a Canuck, or whatever else? Or does it grate at your very soul whenever someone refers to you as such? Let me know in the comments below!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Pom?

Pom is a nickname used mostly by Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans to describe people of British origin. The most likely origin is a shortening of pomegranate, an old Australian rhyming slang for immigrant, with the British tendency to redden under the Australian sun fitting in nicely.

The Australian advertising authority ruled in 2006 that the term wasn’t offensive, and New Zealand’s did the same in 2010. As a Brit, it’s a label you’ll likely have to make peace with.

What is a Kiwi?

Kiwi can refer to three things: the flightless bird native to New Zealand, the kiwi fruit grown there commercially, or a person from New Zealand.

The bird came first, the person second (the nickname stuck during the World Wars from the kiwi being a national symbol on New Zealand armed forces insignia), and the fruit a distant third (rebranded from Chinese gooseberry in 1962 as a marketing exercise). Unlike Pom, Kiwis are more than happy to be called Kiwis.

What is a Canuck?

Canuck is a nickname for a person of Canadian origin, used widely and generally affectionately.

The word’s origins are murky. Theories range from a mispronunciation of the French phrase “quelle canule” (meaning “what a bore!”) to a mash-up of “Canadian” and the Inuit word “inuk”, meaning “man”. The Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team carry the name officially, and once you’ve heard it you start spotting it everywhere: in comic books, song lyrics, and newspaper columns.