Wait wait. I'll give you that actually. Mackem has been traditionally used as the Wearside version of Geordie. However, for some reason it's used far more only in football these days, whereas Geordie is used more to describe where someone is from and Magpie (or mag) is used more for football. It's all a bit messy really. It's all interpretation though. Geordie IS traditionally used to describe someone on Tyneside, so if they describe someone from Shields as a Geordie, then it's factually correct. However, if you want to have an area with a nickname WITHIN an area with a nickname, then Sanddancer is used for Shields folk. Shields residents are perfectly entitled to call themselves that. I'm actually from Shields myself, but I'd put myself as a Geordie. People can call me a sanddancer if they want. I don't mind at all.
Prat I am a Geordie, born in Gateshead and lived in Jarrow now in Durham and I support SUnderland..you are a sad plonker
This will put the cat amongst the magpies! OK, I'll admit it, I had a trawl through the internet after reading this thread because I have always believed that the term "Geordie" originated from the County Durham coal pits, hence, if you came from County Durham you were a Geordie. I came across some old maps which show the County Durham boundary in the days before Tyne & Wear. Gateshead and South Shields were once part of County Durham, as was Sunderland, whilst Newcastle and North Shields were part of Northumberland as the river Tyne was the county boundary. I then found a website that provided the following explanations to the origins of the term "Geordies" I found the last sentence particularly amusing after reading all of the bickering that has been going on, on this thread! Whats a Geordie you may be asking yourself, in essence its them canny fowk from the North East of England sometimes wrongly but not surprisingly mistaken for Scots or Irish. One opinion is that the name was born in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, when the Jacobites bypassed Newcastle, which, as well as favouring the Hanoverian King George, was also a well-guarded garrison. The Jacobites then said that Newcastle and the surrounding areas were all "for George". Hence the name Geordies. Another probable school of thought thinks the name originated from the coal mines of Durham and Northumberland, for many poems and songs written about and in the dialect of these two counties speak of the "Geordie". The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word has two meanings: a guinea (which had the figure of St. George on it) and a pitman. Whilst the name was applicable to coal-miners it later became applicable to Tynesiders in general. The third possible origin is from George Stephenson, who in 1815 invented the miners' lamp. The Northumberland miners used this lamp in preference to that invented by Sir Humphrey Davy at the same time, and the lamp, and eventually, the miners themselves became known as Geordies. The last possible explanation also derives from George Stephenson. In 1826, he gave evidence to a Parliamentary Commission on Railways at which his blunt speech and dialect drew contemptuous sneers. From that date, it is said that Londoners began to call the Keelmen who carried coal from the Tyne to the Thames "Geordie". Who is permitted to call himself a Geordie? Again there are various viewpoints. Originally, it would appear that the name applied only to miners (origin 2 and 3), Keelmen (origin 4) or inhabitants of Newcastle (origin 1). Later it became applied to members of the Tyneside Community at large. Nowadays, it would seem that anyone in Northumberland, Co. Durham or Tyne and Wear can call themselves "Geordie". So there you go. You can all argue til your blue in the face, but the truth is that no one can say with any certainty that they have exclusive rights to the term "Geordie"
My family all count themselves geordies, all live on Tyneside and support Sunderland. I count myself a mackem, but just because I was born in Sunderland.
So there you go. You can all argue til your blue in the face, but the truth is that no one can say with any certainty that they have exclusive rights to the term "Geordie" Nice try Dorset but no cigar for you today...
NICE one Chappazz but factually incorect, you we call a mag as you are reasonable, the rest are skunks, with a few exceptions
Geordie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the people and dialect of Tyneside. For other uses, see Geordie (disambiguation). Geordie is a regional nickname for a person from Tyneside[1] region of the north east of England, or the name of the English-language dialect spoken by its inhabitants. Depending on who is using it, the catchment area for the term "Geordie" can be as large as the whole of North east England, or as small as the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. "Geordieland" is a term usually refering to the entire region surrounding Tyneside including Northumberland and County Durham but excluding Wearside where locals are refered to as Mackems. In most aspects Geordie speech is a direct continuation and development of the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon settlers of this region. Initially mercenaries employed by the ancient Brythons to fight the Pictish invaders after the end of Roman rule in Britannia in the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who thus arrived became, over time, ascendant politically and - through population transfer from tribal homelands in northern Europe - culturally over the native British. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that emerged during the Dark Ages spoke largely mutually-intelligible varieties of what we now call Old English, each varying somewhat in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. This Anglo-Saxon influence on Geordie can be seen today, to the extent that poems by the Anglo-Saxon scholar the Venerable Bede translates more successfully into Geordie than into modern day English.[2] Thus, in northern England, dominated by the kingdom of Northumbria, was found a distinct "Northumbrian" Old English dialect. In recent times "Geordie" has been used to refer to a supporter of Newcastle United football club,[3] and the Newcastle Brown Ale[4] schooner glassware used to serve beer in the United States. Contents [hide]
Appears to back up the contents of my previous post, although the statement does contradict itself. "Can be as large as the whole of North East England" then it states "but excluding Wearside where locals are refered to as Mackems" So where the **** is Wearside if it's not in the NE of England? Wiki is **** sometimes!
So where the **** is Wearside if it's not in the NE of England? Wiki is **** sometimes!. Dorset your in self-denial man, you are a mackem, just deal with it...
That was a valuable contribution to the debate. Are you capable of stringing more than one sentence together?
