I was intrigued when I read @scienceguy's most recent post featuring Macaroni penguins - where on earth did they get their name? Why would anyone name a bird after a kind of pasta?

Turns out that in the 1700s in England, there were "fashionable fellows" who dressed particularly foppishly and went on tour to Italy where they discovered pasta, and were said to belong to the "Macaroni Club".

Eventually they became known as "Maccaronis" (the original spelling).

Source

So what on Earth does this have to do with penguins?

Patience, dear Reader, all will be revealed.

Yankee Doodle

How many of you remember the line from what we thought was a children's song - "He stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni!"? Here's a fife and drum version of the song to remind you how it sounds.

Turns out that was supposed to be a biting insult by the British towards the lesser Americans during the war for independence. I found this excellent piece from the New York Times which is really worth the read.

[George M. Cohan, who wrote the verses for "The Yankee Doodle Boy"] lifted the feather-and-cap lines from a song called, simply, “Yankee Doodle,” which was popularized by British troops during the Revolutionary War. And whoever composed these words — history is inconclusive — didn’t intend a jesting, surreal tribute to the colonists. Quite the opposite. The song is an insult.

It’s not just any insult, either. With “Yankee Doodle,” the Redcoats were delivering the most puerile, schoolyard insult in the schoolyard insult book. They were suggesting that American soldiers were gay.

Gay and bumbling, actually.

Okay, so we've established the song is an insult. But to us, in our current day and age, it's more baffling than insulting. The article's author, David Segal, continues his analysis:

Now to the Revolutionary War. As in armed conflicts before and since, militias on both sides had a large catalog of derisive tunes to lift their spirits. King George III was a favorite target for the Americans, and the Americans were a favorite target for the British. The melody for “Yankee Doodle” had been around for a couple of hundred years, but a tailored-for-the-moment rendition quickly became the most popular tune in the Redcoat repertoire.

The lyrics were venomous. “Yankee” was a withering word for a colonist. A “doodle” was a rube or a fool, and the doodle in this song rides a pony, instead of a horse, which makes him ridiculous. And why is the titular bumpkin heading to town? He hopes to become one of those hyperstylized fellows known as a macaroni.

Here’s the clincher: The doodle can’t pull it off. He thinks that sticking a feather in his cap will suffice to join Britain’s most effete club. In reality, he needs an elaborate costume. The subtext — actually, it might just be the text — is that this quintessential American is a homosexual so daft that he can’t even demonstrate his homosexuality.

Ah, wow. That IS nasty. But the American spirit is not easily cowed by English snobbery. Segal continues:

But Americans are surely the maestros of reappropriation. Conservatives turned the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” from an accusation to a punch line. Liberals turned “Obamacare” from a sneer to an endorsement.

Pop stars like Madonna and Britney Spears made “bitch” a compliment. “Redneck” has a hint of pride these days, thanks largely to Southern comedians like Jeff Foxworthy who made it a touchstone of their identities and routines. Soon after Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a debate, the phrase began appearing on her supporters’ T-shirts.

In short, reappropriation is an American specialty — a rhetorical stratagem practiced even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. So by singing “Yankee Doodle” you’re not just celebrating the country’s birth. You are belting out words used by the soldiers who made that birth possible, and with a taunt that boomeranged for the ages.

Okay, so the song isn't an insult any more and American kids sing it every 4th of July.

Yeah, but I still don't get the connection with penguins...?

According to this link, English sailors who landed on the Falkland Islands saw these penguins and named them Macaroni penguins, inspired by the song. Stuck a feather in his hat....

The rest is history.

So there we have it, folks, penguins within reach of the Antarctic named because a bunch of Brits in the 1770s liked to dress fancily and English sailors still found it funny more than a century later. History can be fun!

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