Hongcouver
noun · first attested 1990s
Two Pacific port cities, one name, and an argument about who counts as a local.
A nickname for Vancouver, British Columbia, used to cast the city as having been taken over by immigrants from Hong Kong.
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Usage
- Ethnic slurA slur against an ethnic or national group. Recorded here for its etymology; it is not neutral vocabulary.
- Attested
- 1990s
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Vancouver
- In English
Hongcouver
The blend replaces Van with Hong and dates from the migration of Hong Kongers to Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s, ahead of the 1997 handover to China. Wiktionary calls it informal and derogatory; Ian Young of the South China Morning Post, who took the word as the title of his Vancouver blog, describes its original force as a pejorative for the Asianization of the city and says that for some users it still marks who belongs there and who will always be an outsider. Young's reuse of the name is a deliberate reclamation, and it has not made the word neutral when it comes from elsewhere.