A claim that certain disenfranchised members of Norman Britain were referred to in the Domesday Book as
A claim that certain disenfranchised members of Norman Britain were referred to in the Domesday Book as Nisps (No income, some plague) proved to be an elaborate hoax, as did a report that Cro-Magnon Man knew Neanderthal Man simply as Nesath (Nice eyes, shame about the hairline). Several linguists have suggested that the practice may have begun in the East, specifically in the foothills of the Himalayas, but this idea seems to be based largely on the belief that the word "Sherpa" stands for something, which it doesn't. No, if we seek are to look for the true origins of the social acronym, we must look to the New World.The incisive pocket biographies that form the base of sociological acronyms such as Sinbad were probably first developed by American Indians. Thanks to the celebrated American historian Kevin Costner, Dances With Wolves is perhaps the best-known example of the Native American tradition of name-as-CV, but there were many others. I am reminded of the famous story of the great Lakotan chief Works Well With Others, who tried to prevent his daughter Can't Cook Won't Cook from falling in love with the troubled young brave Keeps Himself To Himself, insisting she instead confer her attentions on the noble and sensible Good With Children.
She might have listened, if only these descriptive tribal names were a bit shorter and catchier, but unfortunately the Lakota had no concept of initials. It was to take the arrival of the white man to bring the acronym to America.Despite its reputation as a veritable hotbed of acronymic coinage, in its first 200 years as a republic, the United States of America produced very little in the way of social acronyms, apart from VIP (Very important person). Even then people were suspicious of the idea and most refused to pronounce it as "Vip", preferring instead to enunciate each individual initial. Little changed until the early Sixties, when Wasp burst on to the scene to widespread acclaim. So satisfied was the American public with this clever insect name for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, that the demographers of the day seemed content to rest on their laurels.
Wasp remained unchallenged until sometime in the mid-Eighties, when the term Yuppie first appeared.Most of us think of Yuppie (Young urban professional person in employment) as the first real social acronym. The term clearly owes little to its immediate predecessor, Wasp. Yuppie is probably a direct descendant of "Yippie", referring to hippie activists of the Sixties, and coined from the initials of Abbie Hoffman's Youth International Party. Yippie itself seemed to be the etymological bastard child of Vip and jazz-age terms such as junkie, groupie and, of course, hippie But wherever Yuppie came from, it came to stay. Perhaps because for so many young urban professionals becoming a Yuppie represented something of a promotion, the term was happily adopted by those it was coined to ridicule.
Dictionary editors, looking for ways to pad out their sparse "Y" sections, were quick to include Yuppie, and, Pinocchio-like, this little wooden acronym became a real word.From Yuppie came Buppie and Guppie (Black and Gay urban professional people in employment, respectively). It didn't take long for people to realise this would work with anyone or anything. Coming up with a local version - Chuppie, Wuppie, Luppie, Huppie, Nuppie, Sluppie - was a favourite joke among unfunny people until they all suddenly gave it up in favour of finding new M-words to replace the "menstrual" in PMT, coining hilarities such as Pre-millennium tension and Pre-marital tension They were dark days indeed. Meanwhile, on the sociological front, something was stirring.Some bright spark - rumour has it the same man who invented "brunch" - had come up with Dink (Double income, no kids), a pretty piece of shorthand to describe a specific sort of yuppie household.