Geordie

Lore & Background

The term 'Geordie' derives from a familiar diminutive form of the name George, 'a very common name among the pitmen' (coal miners) in North East England. One account traces the name to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, when Newcastle natives supported the Hanoverian king George I, and the term may have come from the anti-Hanoverian song 'Cam Ye O'er Frae France?' calling the king 'Geordie Whelps'. Another explanation is that local miners used Geordie safety lamps designed by George Stephenson in 1815 rather than Davy lamps. Linguist Katie Wales dates the term to at least 1793, noting 'Geordy' was a common name for pitmen in ballads and songs. The earliest recorded use found by publisher Frank Graham dates to 1823, when comedian Billy Purvis called a rival showman 'a real Geordie'. The name 'Bad-weather Geordy' was applied to cockle sellers. Travel writer Scott Dobson used 'Geordieland' in a 1973 guidebook to refer collectively to Northumberland and Durham.

In Their Own Story

The rain hammered against the roof of the St James' Park stand, but inside, the air was thick with the warmth of thousands of voices. An old man in a faded red and black scarf leaned over to his grandson, shouting over the roar of the crowd as the team pushed forward. 'Listen to that,' he said, pointing to the Leazes End where the chant rose like a tidal wave. 'That's not just noise, lad; that's Geordie.' As the ball struck the back of the net and the stadium erupted, the old man smiled, knowing that for this moment, every person in the city was one family, bound by the same accent, the same history, and the same unbreakable love for their club.

Reader's Guide

When referring to the people, dictionary definitions of a Geordie typically refer to a native or inhabitant of Newcastle upon Tyne or its environs, an area encompassing North Tyneside, Newcastle, South Tyneside and Gateshead. The catchment area can include Northumberland and County Durham or be confined to as small as Newcastle upon Tyne and the metropolitan boroughs of Tyneside. People from wider areas like Tyne and Wear and North East England are less likely to accept the term as applying to them. The Geordie dialect is often considered unintelligible to many other native English speakers and is perceived as the 'most attractive in England' and as working-class. Academics refer to the dialect as 'Tyneside English'. Locals insist there are significant differences between Geordie and other local dialects such as Pitmatic (former mining areas in County Durham and around Ashington) and Mackem (dialect of Sunderland and Wearside).

Did You Know?

• The Geordie dialect descends from older Northumbrian dialect, and poems by the Venerable Bede can be translated more successfully into Geordie than into standard modern English.
• While the British Library notes that Norse strongly affected language in Yorkshire, its influence also extended into parts of County Durham and even southern Northumberland, so the idea that it stopped at the River Tees
• Words like 'gan' (go) and 'bairn' (child) trace their roots back to the Angles.
• The Tyneside built-up area (including Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, and Sunderland) had a population of approximately 774,000 according to the 2011 census; Newcastle upon Tyne city proper had arou