Who Are Geordies?
The Geordie nickname originates
from and is used to describe people from the north east of England, specifically
people from the areas of North And South Tyneside, Northumberland (which includes Tynedale and Hexham) and
the mainly western areas of County Durham.
The terms Geordie or
Geordie's probably originated from the fact that the miners in the north east
coalfields used George Stephenson's safety lamps to prevent underground
explosions, rather than the Davy lamp which was more commonplace.
If that's true
then maybe Geordies have George Stephenson to thank for not having the nickname
"Davies"
instead.
The term also used to
encompass the people living in the north east areas of Sunderland and
Middlesbrough but this has been dropped by a large proportion of the people in
these areas, who now seem to prefer to be recognised as Mackem's or Smoggie's respectively.
In reality the
origin of the term Geordie is a bit of a moot point because wherever the
collective term for the north east people originated, what can not be disputed
is that true Geordies are very proud of the nickname and except in exceptional
circumstances never feel
belittled by the very common practice other people in the UK have for using
their surname to distinguish them from other Geordies.
This this
can be seen by inputting the name Geordie followed by a surname into the
Google search engine where at the last count for example there
were
408,000 different search results for Geordie Smith.
Watch
the video clips highlighted below to get a better insight into the language, accent and
character of the Geordie people.
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