10 August 2020
Dago is an ethnic slur that fortunately one hears less frequently these days than one once did. Originally an Americanism, it can now be found in most dialects of English. It is a variation on the given name Diego, and was originally applied to Spaniards, gradually expanding to encompass the Portuguese, Italians, and finally any non-Nordic foreigners.
Use of the name Diego to refer to a Spaniard dates to the sixteenth century. There is this by Thomas Nash in 1599 describing the defenses of the port of Yarmouth, England:
They haue towres vpon them sixteene: mounts vnderfonging & enflancking them two of olde, now three, which haue their thundring tooles to compell Deigo Spanyard to ducke, and strike the winde collicke in his paunch, if he praunce to neere them, and will not vaile to the Queene of England.
And there is this by poet John Taylor, written c. 1611. A number of poets and writers had penned verses mocking Thomas Coryat, who in 1608 had written a self-important travelogue of his journey through Europe. Here Taylor summarizes what Henry Poole had to say about Coryat, likening the English Coryat to a Spanish nobleman:
Incipit Henricus Poole.
Next followes one, whose lines aloft doe raise
Don Coriat, chiefe Diego of our daies.
To praise thy booke, or thee, he knowes not whether,
It makes him study to praise both, or neither.
At last, he learnedly lets flie at large,
Compares thy booke vnto a Westerne Barge;
And saies, 'tis pitty thy all worthlesse worke,
In darke obscurity at home should lurke.
This use of Diego can be found throughout the seventeenth century, but then faded from use.
But it popped up again in the nineteenth-century United States as dago. Since the older use of Diego had disappeared, this dago is likely an independent coinage unrelated to the older usage. The first recorded appearance of dago, spelled dego, is in Enoch Wines’s 1832 book Two Years and a Half in the Navy:
The ship was thronged all day with tailors, hatters, shoemakers, and persons who supply the messes with provisions, all begging our patronage in broken English, and inundating us with certificates of character and eulogiums on themselves. These Degos, as they are pleasantly called by our people, were always a great pest when we were in the harbour of Mahon.
Sources:
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. dago n.
Nash, Thomas. Nashes Lenten Stuffe, Containing, The Description and First Procreation and Increase of the Towne of Great Yarmouth in Norffolke. London: Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes for Nicholas Ling and Cuthbert Burby, 1599, 14. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Dago, n., diego, n.
Taylor, John. All the Workes of Iohn Taylor. London: John Beale for James Boler, 1630, 72. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Wines, Enoch Cobb. Two Years and a Half in the Navy, vol. 1 of 2. Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1832, 100–01. HathiTrust Digital Archive.