Niggle

Incredible name and app

10 out of 10 name, would recommend

NOT racist. Here’s why

This is NOT racist in any way. Labelling someone or something racist can destroy lives, reputations, careers and therefore it is morally and ethically wrong to lay that claim until it you have done research and can provide evidence of racism. Otherwise you are just as bad as the person who makes a false rape accusation. It is cancel culture at its absolute worst since the argument is not even reality based. It does, however, show a lack of education to simply assume that words which sound similar are related. Cat sounds like hat so by the logic used to call this app racist, cat means hat and hat means cat. Except they don’t. Here are some reasons why the claim of racism here is incorrect, all of which are found with a simple internet search or a high school education. “Niggle” and the “n word” are not cognates nor do they even have a common origin. The English loanword “niggle” (meaning to work in a finicky, fussy way; trifling; carping) was adopted from the Old Norse “niggard” (cheap, stingy; petty). It is a direct family adoption as English and Norse are members of the Germanic language families. It’s first known use has been documented to 1592 and there is no history of it being used in a racist manner. The English “n word”, on the other hand, is a cross family word adoption from the Romance language family via the Spanish “niger” and French “nègre” (both meaning the color black). It has been documented from 1570 although the first known use as a racial epithet was not until 1775. The Germanic and Romance language families diverged from Latin between 500 AD and 900 AD, 1000+ years before “niggle”, “niggard” existed. Because of this, there is broad academic consensus that they are totally unrelated with no common meaning even being possible. Now, please excuse me as I have to go feed my hat and hang my cat up on the cat-rack