Scousers and Dicky Sams

There can't be many, if any, people in Britain who don't know the words Scouse and Scouser, which mean Liverpool dialect and Liverpool native respectively (although Scouse can mean a Liverpudlian too). In the ground-breaking tv comedy series Till Death Us Do Part which ran from 1966 to 1975, some of the funniest scenes were when the Cockney bigot Alf Garnett railed against his lazy son-in-law, played by Anthony Booth (father of ex-PM Tony Blair's wife Cherie), calling him a Scouse git. American readers may know of the Micky Dolenz song Randy Scouse Git on the Monkees' 1967 Headquarters album (Dolenz got the phrase from the tv sitcom).

The word Scouse comes from 'lobscouse', a dish similar to Irish stew. My Mum used to make it in the late 50s and early 60s. What I didn't realise then, was that the words Scouse (though not lobscouse) and Scouser meaning Liverpudlian were new words at the time. The OED records the first usage for Scouse as only in 1945 and it didn't really catch on until the 1960s, probably because of Till Death Us Do Part.

Hardly anyone these days, even Scousers, knows the term Dicky Sam, which is the old, pre-Scouser term for a Liverpudlian. Some contributors on internet forums talk of an old pub called The Dicky Sam, whcih used to be near the Pier Head, the departure point for the ferries across the Mersey. The Oxford English Dictionary says that Dicky Sam is a corruption of the Lancashire patronymic Dick O'Sam's.

Richard McKinley, in his book The Surnames of Lancashire (Leopard's Head Press, London, 1981) confirms that patronymics were in use in that county (and Liverpool was in the county of Lancashire until the 1970s) until the 18th century, and O'Sam's is a patronymic, meaning 'son of Sam'. During the Middle Ages Lancashire was a remote county, cut off from the rest of the country, with the Irish Sea on one side and the Pennine Hills on the other. Surnames in the county differed from those elsewhere in Britain.

Scouser is used when talking about a person from Liverpool in the third person, not when addressing her or him. A term of address for a Liverpudlian is wack (or wacker), as in 'A'right wack?' but I must admit that I have heard this word more often in comedy sketches than on the streets of Liverpool. Another term of address, which I can recall hearing on many occasions is 'laa', always accompanied by 'eh', as in 'Eh laa', which usually prefaces a question of some sort.

Comments

[Roland Parr]

Reference the use of the word 'Wack' or 'Wacker' to mean a native of Liverpool, I agree that the word is mysteriously missing from everyday speech in the city, 'Scouse' and 'La/laa/lah' being commonplace. As a native of the city and having spent most of my formative years there, I am now engaged in 'scouse missionary' work, sharing my time between Cambridge and Berlin, another great city. For the purposes of some linguistic research I am undertaking, I would be grateful if anyone could give me the derivation of 'Wack' or 'Wacker', when were the words in use and does anyone know people who still use them.

I am grateful for any help you can give.

Roland

[mick O'Reilly]

Dear Roland I'm not a historian, but remember when I was kid any kids called Peter could sometimes called Wacker. Pe-wack.
my father use to call pea soup. Pe-wack soup.
Hope this is some help.

[John Jay]

Wacker derives from the word wack (or whack) meaning to "share" or to "split" fairly between 2 or more people - a term used extensively among British troops during WW1(especially in the trenches). And since, at that time, Liverpudlians were especially notorious for their generously light-fingered propensity to 'share' things (or steal them!) like cigarettes or other goodies among themselves, troops who spoke with the distinctive accent of that city were commonly identified as "Wackers" (or Whackers").

[John Jay]

"Dicky Sam" was a term commonly applied to people from Liverpool largely due to their boastfully un-English and characteristically extrovert disposition - which most other Brits tended to regard as somewhat akin to that of Uncle "Sams" - (or Americans...!)

Not so surprising, since back in Victorian and Edwardian days Liverpool was the world's largest seaport, mainly shipping to New York and other major ports along America's Eastern Seaboard - its streets teeming from morning to night with a distinctly un-English vigour.

Hence, in the early 20th Century, and right up to WW2, Liverpool Football Club's nickname was the "Dicky Sams" or "Little Americans."

[Virtual Linguist]

Fascinating, John. Thanks very much for the info.