So are Mackems only from Sunderland

Hmm, not really. When my mum was a kid, it was just born in sight of the River Tyne within the boundaries of the (then) City and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. If you were born west of Newburn or east of say Wallsend, you didn't qualify.

Calling anyone South of the Tyne, up in Northumberland a Geordie just didn't happen. A Geordie at that stage would never countenance anyone from Sunderland as a Geordie. Mack'em and Tack'em was in use in Newcastle long before Sunderland regularly heard the term for the first time.

Wrong.

The BBC did a TV programme called Wordsearch where they traced the history of where certain words or phrases came from. One programme was about the word Mackems and they traced it back to the 80's, nowt before then. Geordie was in use 600 years before newcastle was founded so unless the sheep in that field full of sheep shit that newcastle was eventually built on were calling themselves Geordies yer ma's deluded.
 


Wrong.

The BBC did a TV programme called Wordsearch where they traced the history of where certain words or phrases came from. One programme was about the word Mackems and they traced it back to the 80's, nowt before then. Geordie was in use 600 years before newcastle was founded so unless the sheep in that field full of sheep shit that newcastle was eventually built on were calling themselves Geordies yer ma's deluded.


The history of Newcastle upon Tyne dates back to Pons Aelius from AD120. I don't know of any Roman references to "Bastardis Geordius". :D

My mum remembers the term Mack'em and Tack'em being used when she was a kid, referring to Sunderland ship builders visiting Tyneside ship yards (her dad - my grad father - worked for a time at Swan Hunters). She's just turned 84 and her mother was regularly using the term before that. It just wasn't in printed form before the 1970s and 1980s when it was forst seen as an insult in Sunderland before adoption.

The term as originally defined (though expanded upon) by the OED was Geordies were from Tyneside. The definition I give was that used by themselves in the earlier part of the 20th Century. Gateshead, Jarrow and South Shields did not count.

I do concede it was used loosely outside the city to apply to the general area including coal mining areas, but it may be a case Geordies themselves did not count such "outsiders".

It's a case of a word used for a long time in verbal communication finally taking purchase in written form with extended use.
 

Back
Top