World War II

Hooligans, the Lot of Them!

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

Hooligan‘s a great word, isn’t it? The sound of it really matches what it represents. Now the word is mainly associated with troublemakers at football games, but it’s been around for quite a long time. It first appeared in British police reports in 1898, and seems to have been based on the surname Houlihan. Coming from the original Gaelic surname Ó hUallacháin, it came to be used to represent a stereotypical comic Irish figure in music-hall shows in the late 19th century.

Given the stereotypes of Irish people in cities like New York and London at the time, it’s not such a surprise that the name became a synonym for an angry, violent, and probably drunk, individual. The word was also quickly absorbed into Russian as khuligan, to refer to violent young men harassing people on the streets, and political dissenters. Continue reading →

Motherland or Fatherland?

Niall O'Donnell 7 Comments

Why do the inhabitants of some nations refer to the country as Motherland, and some Fatherland? The answer is a little complicated, unsurprisingly.

The use of both terms became most common in works of propaganda during World War II. This is particularly evident in the cases of The Soviet Union and Germany. Many Soviet propaganda posters of the time feature the phrase za rodinu! (For the Motherland!). Rodina, the Russian word for homeland, is a feminine noun, and many related words with the stem rod are associated with motherhood, fertility and procreation, so it perhaps makes sense that Russians would conceive of Mother Russia. Continue reading →