When I first saw the bit about Rick Perry and "Niggerhead", my first response was not outrage, but curiosity. You see, I have a long-standing curiosity about language.
My first question was whether the person who named the retreat in question was genuinely racist, or just insensitive.
I had run into that word recently--several times in fact. In the past couple of years I have been reading the original James Bond novels, and that was my first acquaintance with the term. Now, as fun as these novels can be (and generally speaking, they can be not only quite a lot of fun, but actually quite good IMHO), there is no question that Ian Fleming was less than enlightened on a great many issues, race and sex foremost among them. That said, he did write strong and sympathetic black and female characters, although most of them were more caricature than character (though the same can arguably be said about his protagonist--no doubt one of the reasons for his appeal). In short, I believe that Fleming was a product of his background, an entitled upper class Englishman that took his superiority to other people for granted by virtue of the fact that he was an upper class Englishman.
That said, his constant use of stereotypes notwithstanding (in fact in some ways, the success of Bond no doubt lies in part in the fact that he was a bit of a stereotype), I did not perceive a true racial hatred in the man. He seemed like the kind of people who might have black friends, faint praise though that may be.
Getting back to the point, Fleming, though he frequently used stereotypes, did not often (I am tempted to say never, but I haven't read all the books and may have have glossed over some) used racial epithets.
"Niggerhead", however is a word that frequently appears in his books.
As it always appeared as an inanimate object in a marine setting, I was curious and looked it up. It turns out to mean, among other things, "an isolated part of a coral reef". This was the context it which Fleming certainly meant it.
Now, no doubt, the word stemmed from racist language and was probably something like Don Imus's "nappy-headed" reference, but there are other words that we use that stem from such things as well. "Paddy Wagon", a word that was used in three diaries here on the DailyKos in the past few days, two of them on the rec list, is actually derived from a derogatory term for Irishmen. I have no doubt that none of the people that used it actually thought of it this way. These days, the Irish, unlike black people, have basically entirely overcome their formerly oppressed status (except maybe in some upper-class parts of New England).
I also thought about the time I took a trip to Korea as the only non-Japanese member of a Japanese tour group. One of the people on our trip was a rather influential Japanese academic who had recently been appointed to a rather important position by then-Prime Minister Koizuimi Junichiro. At one point, we were all gathered at a famous Korean landmark and had to go through the obligatory ritual of the group photo. Our Korean guide was given a number of cameras by the members of our group to snap our pictures. The man in question, the leader of our group, handed his camera over and, with some embarrassment, apologized for the low quality of his camera. His choice of words, however, was most impolitic, given the venue. He referred to his shutterbox as a "baka-chon" camera. In Japanese, "baka" means "idiot" and "chon" is a derogatory term with roughly the emotional impact of "gook". "Baka-chon camera" thus, roughly translated, is a "camera so simple that even and idiot or a gook can use it." Needless, to say, I cringed at the use of this term. Fortunately, either our guide's command of Japanese was not so great that she understood this, or she decided not to make an issue of it. Given the man's position, this could easily have become an international incident if she had. I have no doubt that the man who said this did not mean it as a slam against Koreans. I'm sure he had no idea of the etymology of the word (most Japanese don't and he hasn't a bigoted bone in his body).
We use many words in ignorance of their etymology. Most people don't know that "testify" and "testicle" have a common root, the idea apparently being that if you lie, you lose one. The same goes for "test" and "testicle" because, you see, you need balls to pass one. No doubt there are a number of female contributors to this forum who would beg to differ.
Among my favorite misunderstood etymologies, however, are those that derive from Chinese characters. A friend of mine once told me that he had heard from a motivational speaker that the Chinese characters for "crisis" and "opportunity" are the same. I have no idea about Chinese, but in Japanese those words do share a common character. I told him as much, but I also pointed out that the Chinese character that in Japanese means "avoid" comes from a character for "anal sex" and that for "business" or "trade" comes from a character which originally meant "sex". But perhaps my favorite of all etymological coincidences is that the character that is short for "nuclear weapon" and "clitoris" is the same in Japanese.
All of this got me to thinking: how responsible are we for the etymologies of the words we use, especially when they have become obscure?
I would argue that in this day and age, "niggerhead" is certainly over the line. The others, however, I'm not so sure about.
I'm interested in your opinions and also any other intriguing etymologies you might know.