Italians

English attitudes toward Italy and its peoples have historically been contradictory, a mixture of admiration and repulsion, governed by cultural affiliations and religious divisions. The positive stereotype derives from the status of Italy as the cultural repository of Roman civilization, much emphasized in medieval and Renaissance times, and persisting to this day. The list of major poets who have drawn inspiration from Italy and Italian models is almost endless, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, and in the modern period, Ezra Pound. (Several of them died there.) Chaucer visited Italy at least twice and was profoundly influenced by Italian models, namely the spirituality of Dante, the idealism of Petrarch, and the realism of Boccaccio. The first two figures served as seminal models to Renaissance poets. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1561) had a profound influence on the English nobility, demonstrating the virtues of an ideal courtly life and offering the model for a perfect gentleman.

However, as a consequence of Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1536 and his declaration of the Church of England, Italy became the home of a hostile religion and a political enemy. Sir Henry Wooton (1568–1639) in his Letters from Italy , encapsulated contradictory attitudes in the description that “Italy is a paradise inhabited by devils” (84). “The number of obdurate papists and Italianate atheists is great at this time,” wrote Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, to Lord Burleigh in a letter of 1572. On the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, Italy was depicted as a decadent, corrupt, politically devious society, a hotbed of family betrayal, incest, murder, and treachery of every conceivable form. Cardinals and bishops were frequently the instigators of appalling crimes. A new stage villain emerged, ruthless, demonic, and cynically amused at his treacheries. He was styled the machiavel , derived from Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian statesman and author of The Prince (1523), a highly influential work of political philosophy. It was translated into English only in 1640, but the negative stereotype of the machiavel , really a travesty of Machiavelli, preceded it. Announcing his program of evil, Shakespeare’s Richard III boasts (1590–1591) that he will “set the murderous machiavel to school” ( Henry VI Part 3 , III ii 193). The figure of Machiavel plays the Prologue to Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1589).

“Unnatural” sexual practices also formed part of negative stereotyping. The phrase “in the Italian fashion” early became established as a euphemism for sodomy. Benvenuto Cellini relates in his Autobiography (1558–1566) how his mistress and model Catarina unscrupulously brought a case against him in France, accusing him of using her “in the Italian fashion, that is to say, unnaturally like a sodomite.” (In the trial only the phrase “in the Italian way” was used.) Cellini angrily refuted the charge: “To this I answered that such was not the Italian way, and that on the contrary it must be the French way, since she knew all about it and not I” (1956, 249-51). Samuel Pepys noted in his diary entry for July 1, 1663: “Buggery is now almost grown as common amongst our gallants [smart society men] as in Italy.”

The arrival of opera on the London stage in the early eighteenth century, more especially the extraordinary vocal artists known as the castrati, of whom Carlo Farinelli was the most brilliant, provoked great controversy and much hostility. The major satirist Alexander Pope castigated the decadent era entertained by “New eunuchs Harlequins and Operas” ( Fourth Satire of John Donne , l. 125). Henry Carey went further, associating Italy with homosexuality and sodomy in his “Satire on the Luxury [Lust] and Effeminacy of the Age”:

Curse on this damn’d Italian pathic mode,
To Sodom and to Hell the ready road.

The reference to Sodom is obvious; pathic was an early term for a homosexual.

The earliest specific nickname for Italians is macaroni , suggested in the Spectator (April 24, 1711) where Joseph Addison made the seminal observation linking diet and national nicknames: “in Holland they are termed Pickled Herrings; in France Jean Pottages; in Italy maccaronies; and in Great Britain Jack Puddings,” (no. 47). From the Macaroni Club in London (1760–1775) grew up the associated meaning of a fop, the membership being described by Horace Walpole, the indefatigable letter writer and gossip, as “composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying glasses” (letter of February 6, 1764). It was used with diminishing frequency through the early part of the twentieth century, and is now obsolete in British English.

Italian immigrants to the United States were initially viewed as aliens and outsiders. Being a large and distinctive population, they attracted many nicknames, according to Irving Lewis Allen (1983) over fifty, of which dago, eytie, greaseball, guinea, spic , and wop have been the most prominent. Of these wop , dating from the 1890s, is the term of greatest impact, possibly because it is Italian in derivation, from Neapolitan and Sicilian guappo , meaning a dude, a swell, or a bold showy ruffian. It appeared, significantly, during the peak of Italian immigration to the United States, among a population predominantly from southern Italy, especially from the Naples area. From being used initially by Neapolitans and Sicilians, the term spread outward.

The association with organized crime was made explicit in the first recorded use of wop , then spelled as wap: “there is a society of criminal young men in New York City … known by the euphonious name of ‘Waps’ or ’Jacks’… They form one variety of the many gangs that infest the city.” This comes from a detailed description by Arthur Train, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney, in his study, Courts, Criminals and Camorra (1912, ix, 232). The Camorra were the Neapolitan version of the Mafia , that term being recorded from about 1866, originally referring specifically to a secret criminal organization originating in Sicily. Although the early associations with America were stressed, the term is now generalized, as in “the Nigerian mafia” or “the Eton mafia.” Despite the well-attested origin of wop , persuasive but fanciful folk etymologies have been advanced claiming that wop is an acronym derived from the supposed immigration category With Out Passport or With Out Papers, alternatively Working on Pavement. Clearly these etymologies serve to strengthen the negative stereotypes of Italians as being illegal immigrants (as with wetback for a Mexican) or menial laborers (as with cotton-picking for a Negro).

Harper’s Weekly (October 16, 1890) observed: “The lower ‘sporting’ element in the poorer quarters of New York call them ‘Guineas’ and ‘Dagoes.’” This is the first recorded Italian application of guinea , which originally denoted a black person, usually a slave from the Guinea coast. Dago , from Diego , the equivalent of the name James , originally referred to a Spaniard or Portuguese, but started to be used generically of a person from the Mediterranean from the 1860s, a typical generalization to apply to dark-skinned or swarthy foreigners. In similar fashion, greaseball was used originally (in the period of World War I) of a person of filthy or greasy appearance, but within a decade was being applied to any white person of Latin-American or Mediterranean descent. A similar pattern of semantic generalization is found in spic , dating from 1915 and often presumed to derive from “no spick English.”

Various distortions of the name Italian have served as nicknames. Eyetalian is first recorded in 1840, interestingly prior to major Italian immigration to the United States, but eyetie is generally found much later, immediately after World War I. American servicemen clearly imported their own terms, for even in 1943 a writer observed: “We hardly ever heard Italian soldiers referred to as Italians. It was either ‘Eyeties’ or ‘Wops’ or ‘Guineas’” (Ernie Pyle, Your War , 166). The term is generally regarded (by lexicographers) as less offensive than wop , being marked as “jocular” by the Oxford English Dictionary , of “lesser impact” by the Dictionary of American Slang (1986) and “used derisively” by Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994).

Also from World War II came meatball , which was already establishing the senses of “a stupid or objectionable person.” Other distinctive food metaphors are spaghetti, spaghetti-bender, spaghetti-head , and the variants spigotti and spig , the more plausible origin of spic . Swearing, especially blasphemy, is extremely common in Italy (see Averna and Salemi 1977–1987, 42-47), but this aspect is not alluded to in the nicknames. Likewise, although Fascism originated and thrived in Italy for over two decades, the term has retained no semantic link or specific association with Italians, as is the case with the generic use of nazi and Hitler . The undistinguished Italian war record led to jokes like “How many gears has an Italian tank got?” Answer: “Five. One forward and four reverse.” However, World War II also generated the Italian salute , a provocative obscene gesture using the bent forearm to signify “up yours.”

In general, terms for Italians would seem to fall into the categories of “insulting” or “demeaning,” rather than “offensive” or “taboo.” However, as always, perceptions vary depending on role and user.