How Jews Became Kikes

dispelling the Ellis Island myth and resolving a long-standing etymological mystery

This probably won’t be the most popular post on an already obscure blog as the topic is fairly trivial and doesn’t directly pertain to antisemitism; other essays concerning topics like blood libel and Leo Frank are in the works. Regardless, I feel that the typical answers you hear or would find on Google are insufficient and decided to record some findings of my own. The post begins by surveying the most common etymologies of the word “kike” before moving on to what I believe to be best supported by the evidence: an origin among the German Jews of the New York City clothing industry. See the final section for a TL;DR.

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The origin of the anti-Jewish slur “kike” has been a source of dispute among etymologists practically since it first emerged in the early 20th century.¹ A number of competing theories have been raised over the years, including the following:

• that it comes “perhaps from Ike or Ikey, familiar forms of the male forename Isaac,” if you look up the word on Google

• that it “derives from the personal name Hayyim, usually transcribed in German as Chaim”

• that it was “modeled on hike Italian, itself modeled on mike Irishman, short for Michael”

• that it “derives from the Latin caeca (‘blind’) [pr. “kike-ah”], a common traditional Christian defamation of Jews”

• that it’s corrupted from the Irish “Ciabhóg, a person adorned with a forelock or sidelock”

Yet the only thing these wildly different suggestions have in common is their total lack of direct evidence, merely being the speculations of various authors based on vague phonetic similarities. At any rate, these are among the less common theories, and for the most part have been dismissed by the relevant opinions.

Lacher’s Theory

The theory that used to have the most currency was that the word had to do with the names of many Jews of Eastern European background. Originally put forth by JHA Lacher in 1925, it goes as follows:

TL;DR: the -ky suffix to names like Lansky formed the term “kiki” > “kike”

According to Lacher, the epithet was actually coined by German Jews to be used against their coreligionists from the East. This would make sense: German Jewish snobbery toward the so-called Ostjuden is well-known and extended from Berlin to New York to, apparently, Winona, MN. As far as kike is concerned, Allen (1983) writes that “there is agreement that it was originally an ingroup term used by the early-arrived ‘German’ Jews to denominate the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived around the turn of the last century.”² One illustrative anecdote is cited in Tamony (1978):

That pejorative use of kike among German Jews continued long into the twentieth century is currently exampled by Paul Jacobs' Is Curly Jewish? Jacobs writes the gap between the German and East European Jew was “nearly as great as the one separating my parents from their Christian friends. Yiddish was a lower-class language . . . . A ‘kike’. . .was any Eastern Jew, especially the noisy ones. 'Stop acting like a kike' was a frequent admonition to noisy, badly behaved children — or adults as well — who offended the middle-class mores of the German Jews”

The specific etymology Lacher gives, on the other hand, is a different story altogether. After all, the theory requires a suffix like “-sky” lose its “S,” reduplicate, and then alter its vowels to produce kike. Liberman notes that “[g]iven such freedom of phonetic change, almost any combination of sounds can be shown to become any other,” which is something Lacher provides no actual evidence for in this case. While still occasionally being cited, most authorities in the decades since evidently haven’t bought it.

Ellis Island

Among laymen, one other theory stands out: that the slur dates back to Ellis Island. According to the popular conception, illiterate Jews, when asked to write an “X” in lieu of their signature, would instead draw a circle, associating the X with a Christian cross. The word for circle in Yiddish being “kikel,” these immigrants were soon being referred to as kikes by the workers. From there the word enters the common lexicon, at some point gaining a negative connotation.

This particular etymology comes from Leo Rosten’s 1968 classic, The Joys of Yiddish. According to Rosten:

1. The word kike was born on Ellis Island, when Jewish immigrants who were illiterate (or could not use Roman-English letters), when asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary "X," refused and instead made a circle. The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced KY-kel), and for "little circle," kikeleh. Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an "O" instead of an "X" a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike.

But there are a couple of problems with this explanation. Firstly, immigrants were not actually expected to sign forms at Ellis Island. All personal information germane to immigration officials was handed over in the passenger logs called Manifests collected by shipping lines. As such this appears akin to the myth of Ellis Island’s arbitrary name-changes.

Secondly, multiple authors have pointed out that “kikel” (more properly transliterated kaykl) is not an ordinary Yiddish word for “circle,” which more properly would be krayz or rod. While it’s nonetheless true that this less common term is recorded in some Yiddish dictionaries, surely it’s a stretch to believe that a word used by a small minority of illiterate Jewish immigrants would somehow escape the Island and find its place in modern parlance; numerous authors have thus taken issue with Rosten’s view.³

But Rosten continues along a related line of thought:

2. Jewish storekeepers on the Lower East Side, and peddlers who went far out into the hinterlands with their wares, conducted much of their trade on credit; and these early merchants, many of whom could not read or write English, would check off a payment from a customer, in their own or the customer's account book, with a little circle ("I'll make you a kikeleh")—never an "X" or a cross. . . .

And so those who drew kikelehs, whether on Ellis Island or Avenue B, in Ohio or Kansas or wherever the hardy peddlers traveled into the Mid- and far West, came to be known as "kike men" or "kikes." Dr. Shlomo Noble informs me that the miners of northeastern Pennsylvania would say, "I bought it from the kike man," or "The kike man will be coming around soon."

His full explanation, then, is that such everyday interactions developed a popular association between the Jewish immigrants of the turn of the last century and the words they used for “circle.” Indeed, this is corroborated by at least two early attempts to etymologize kike, which likely served as the inspiration for Rosten’s argument:

1. Recorded in a 1933 book, Gotthard Deutsch relates the story of an illiterate Jewish drummer (an old term for traveling salesman) who came to be known as a “kike” due to his substituting of written language with a peculiar system of inscribed “kikels.”

2. In a letter to the editor for The American Israelite from 1914, a reader conversely opines: “It seems probable that drummers called the Russian Jew, who unable to sign his name in English made his handmark in the form of the traditional Kykala, a Kyke. The term undoubtedly originated as drummer slang.”

These anecdotes further document the usage of kaykl as a word for “circle,” however common it may have been, and at least establish Rosten’s theory as a possibility. However, neither this drummer story nor the Ellis Island one, both positing a non-Jewish origin, would explain why German Jews were so drawn to the word, and both contradict the popular suggestion that they were the ones who coined it.

Into the Archives

As far as I have been able to tell, very little research into the subject has been conducted beyond the traditional etymological accounts from the 20th century, before the advent of the Internet and the massive digital databases that came with it. The troves of archived sources made available by the likes of Google Books and Hathitrust are truly not appreciated by enough people. The rest of this post will rely heavily on my findings from digging around in these century-old documents.

First, we can establish a clear tradition of usage among the German Jews of the day:

• A rabbi laments in 1912 that “[t]he German Jews are bitterly opposed to the ‘Kikes,’ as they persist in calling the Russian Jews.”

• A 1922 issue of The American Hebrew notes that “The German Jew in America and his descendants look with scorn upon the Russian Jews in this country, whom they designate by the contemptuous term of ‘kike.’”

• Another issue from 1922 claims that “the German Jew is frequently mightily ungenerous in his treatment of his poorer brethren, the Russian and Polish Jew . . . Nay, he even says he isn’t a Jew at all, and calls him obnoxious, opprobrious names, of which ‘Kike’ is one of the least offensive.”

• A non-Jewish writer from 1927 revealingly alleges: “It is unfortunate that we must say that the expression of ‘kike’ is used more by the Jewish element than anyone else.”

• A short story from 1928 has Mr. Siegall snap at Mr. Cohn with “Listen! You, what have you had to suffer? Your people are bankers two, three hundred years. I was an East Side kike. Yes, kike! I'm Russian—born in a Second Avenue tenement.”

• A book from 1934 writes: “the epithet ‘kike’ applied to the Eastern European Jew, is of Jewish, not Gentile, coinage. Whatever its origin, it was used to express the attitude of German Jews to their brethren from Russia and Poland.”

While it’s impossible to prove, this idea that the word was a German Jewish invention — not simply an appropriation — also seems likely, especially since the earliest written instance anyone can find of kike as an anti-Jewish slur relates this exact intra-ethnic dynamic: “Perhaps (I am not sure) he hungers to become a member of one of the ‘high-toned congregations,’ but with his connections in the Ghetto, how can he? What ‘uptown lady’ would tolerate an ‘East Side kike’?” (1901)

I’m careful to specify that the above quote is the earliest example of kike “as an anti-Jewish slur,” because further research reveals that the term actually extends back even earlier, but with a different meaning. In an article from Cloaks and Furs from the same year, we read the following:

The better grades of manufactured furs, from small furs to fur garments, were ordered at prevailing prices from the most able manufacturers, whose quotations are considered by the shrewdest buyers to be in many cases lower than those given by the unreliable manufacturers. Two of these buyers when asked to explain this apparent anomaly “guessed” that the big concerns have adopted the style of doing business as heretofore peculiar to the so-called kyke manufacturer, and as they are able to get their goods considerably cheaper than these, and their contingent expenses and factory expenses are less than those of the kykes’ (inclusive of their profits) the outlook for the latter is not a good one.

Here we encounter our final theory.

From Rags to Riches

HL Mencken was the first to make this connection. Writing in the 1930s in The American Speech (4th ed.), he observes that Webster’s Second lists the word kike with two definitions, the latter being “A Jew,” and the former “keek,” defined on the same page as “A peeper; specif., in the clothing trade, one employed by a manufacturer to get by spying the latest designs by rivals for imitation.” This since-forgotten term, evidently originating from the Scots for “peek,” can be traced back to a 1903 dictionary which defines “keek” as “in the clothing trade, a person engaged by a garment-maker to obtain the latest styles by a rival concern that he may make up his goods in imitation, but for sale at a lower price,” and, importantly, lists as its variants “keik; kike; kyke.”

Other contemporary records attest to the keek-turned-kike nuisance as well. Two industry journal articles from the following year elaborate:

There is great secrecy maintained on account of the fact that oftentimes exclusive designs are taken bodily by the pirates, known as “kikes” in the trade. The manufacturers simply live on other men's brains and the more clever the original design the more quickly is it taken by the little fellows. Trade conditions have become such that with a few hundred dollars any man can start up a little belt shop and sell his goods. It requires but little capital and many men get almost all their designs from their business competitors. (1904)

The large manufacturer employs artistic ability in his factory; the kike can only imitate and copy his ideas, and were he compelled to pay the same scale of wages as the large manufacturer, it can be readily seen that he would die a natural death; but when he can copy the garments of the reputable firms, using cheap labor and paying practically no rent, it is easy to understand that he has an advantage that the large concerns can only overcome by constantly creating new and novel designs. (1904)

A number of etymological reviews mention this hypothesis, though usually in passing. Only one endorses it: Tamony (1978), which supplies no actual evidence behind the decision. This lack of documentary support is probably why the theory tends to be treated the same way as Lacher’s.

Nevertheless, the connection here is striking when one recalls the position of both German Jews in America and their Ostjuden counterparts who’d been inundating the country since the late 19th century. Mostly situated in New York, both groups clustered in its burgeoning garment industry and formed a successful ethnic niche. The Germans, who’d established themselves in the decades prior, came to dominate the city’s clothing scene by the time the Easterners were crowding the tenements of the Lower East Side.

As early as 1890 almost 80 percent of New York’s garment industry was located below 14th Street, and more than 90 percent of these facto­ries were owned by German Jews. Lower New York, therefore, was a power­ful magnet for the Eastern Europeans throughout the period of mass immi­gration. Immigrants were attracted by jobs and by Jewish employers who could provide a familiar milieu as well as the opportunity to observe the Sabbath. By 1897 approximately 60 percent of the New York Jewish labor force was employed in the apparel field, and 75 percent of the workers in the industry were Jewish. (My Jewish Learning)

German Jews — generally more affluent, acculturated, and skilled — were well suited to rise the ranks in the American clothing industry from peddler to magnate. This was in stark contrast to the situation of the Ostjuden:

While apparel was an important economic niche for German Jewish immigrants seeking economic advancement, for the east European Jews it was essentially their only route into the American mainstream. This distinction can be reflected in the degree of specialization that took place in the first decades of the twentieth century. By the mid-1930s the Jewish population represented 27 percent of the New York City workforce overall, yet as many as three-quarters in clothes manufacturing and 80 percent of all the workers in clothes stores. . . .

The east European Jewish immigrants flooded into the clothing industry because no one else would; conditions were too poor. In other sectors in these urban economies, from construction to transport, heavy industry to services, wages and conditions were better, and so east European Jews were confronted with strong competition from other more advantaged immigrants and natives. Whether through discrimination or not, the Jews typically lost out.

But it was not simply that the clothing industry was a refuge from competitive labor markets for the east European Jews. As Roger Waldinger and Michael Lichter have recently emphasized, when unskilled or low-skilled immigrants enter a labor market, they typically follow ethnic chains of recruitment. Where a surplus of ethnic labor exists, immigrant preference for working within an “ethnic” environment can have the effect of allowing employers to further reduce wages and conditions, even if the labor market overall may be tight.⁴

Whatever the reasons for it, what we end up seeing with these two groups is, at least in the beginning, the well-established German Jews in charge of the big New York clothing firms that employed Ostjüdisch workers. The nature of this labor was particularly grueling for these immigrants, as the industry relied increasingly on sweatshops:

The demand for inex­pen­sive clothes remained strong in New York and across the nation. The gar­ment indus­try respond­ed by devel­op­ing an inex­pen­sive ​“ready-made” indus­try, replac­ing arti­san tai­lors who cre­at­ed the gar­ment from start to finish with a sys­tem of poor­ly paid ​“out­work­ers” to do ​“piece­work.” A man­u­fac­tur­er would begin the process by pur­chas­ing and cut­ting the cloth which was then sent to ​“out­work­ers” to fin­ish the process. In 1855, ​“out­work­ers” made up an aston­ishing 91 per­cent of the work­ers in the gar­ment industry. (Jewish Book Council)

Jews into “Kikes”

I managed to come across a contemporary account of these practices in the July, 1913 edition of Munsey’s Magazine:

A sort of "padrone" system developed. Of course, there were some big manufacturers, but they did not have large establishments of their own. They parceled out their work to smaller bosses, and in this way the sub-contracting process, which fostered all the evils of the trade, came into being.

For example, a large manufacturer got an order for five thousand army overcoats. He bought the goods and had the garments cut on his premises. Then he made a contract with a smaller man to make the coats at a certain price. He gave himself no further concern about the matter until the finished articles were delivered. The smaller boss had a sweat-shop on some crowded East Side street or up a dark alley. His task was to produce the garments cheaply, and at a profit to himself.

The article continues:

Therefore he drove the hardest bargain with his help — mostly "kikes," as the raw Russian immigrants were called.

Eventually, the industry again changed as Jewish sweatshops gave way to Jewish department stores:

Sooner or later, a change was inevitable. As the quality of the ready-made garment improved, the larger manufacturers, who in most cases had risen from "kike" to magnate, began to develop the direct employment idea. They moved from the congested downtown districts into the "loft" building zone uptown, where they were near their big customers in the department-stores. By this change they not only inaugurated a revolution in their industry, but changed the physical character of whole neighborhoods.

Note how the meaning of kike here is no longer a “keek,” nor is it any Jew interchangeably, but rather a Russian Jewish immigrant of low status, something that can be transcended.

Along with the Munsey’s article, a number of sources collectively document a colloquial shift in the definition of kike which, as time goes on, becomes increasingly linked to the growing pool of impoverished, mostly Jewish competition. This should be no wonder if one recalls how the decentralized system that Jewish labor ushered in made “keeking” commonplace:

Trade conditions have become such that with a few hundred dollars any man can start up a little belt shop and sell his goods. It requires but little capital and many men get almost all their designs from their business competitors. (1904)

For some, the word generalizes from one who “keeks” to any number of industry cheats felt to be plaguing the trade; for others, like the Munsey’s writer, it means a Russian Jewish outworker; for others still, Russian Jews in the generic; ultimately, of course, coming to refer to all Jews without distinction. A lexicographer writing in 1916 notes this shift in meaning:

The word kike is an adaptation from the Scottish keek, which designates “One who peeps; especially in the clothing trade, a person engaged by a garment-maker to obtain the latest styles from a rival concern that he may make up his goods in imitation, but for sale at a lower price.” It is used to-day in a derogatory sense indicating a low standard of honor.

Throughout the aughts, the word was still mostly confined to the industry. One source from 1908 defines it as a “contemptuous term for unscrupulous, tricky Hebrew merchants and manufacturers; a term little used outside of the apparel trades and seldom heard in connection with large concerns.” By the teens, however, it begins to seep into common usage.

A number of examples follow for reference:

• 1904: “He had the impudence to tell me that Louie Zinsheimer was a kike! It isn’t true. Louie Zinsheimer is interested in a cloak factory that may or may not be non-union, but Louis says business is so bad and there are so many fires in the wholesale district these days that he can’t tell what may happen.”

• 1906: “There is a class of wholesale clothing dealers in the East known as ‘Kikes.’ The interpretation of this word is ‘an unscrupulous, unreliable merchant as well as a man of many prices.’”

• 1906: “And the brands of the aforesaid offerings of white and fancy stiff bosoms and negligees were not ‘kike stuff’ by any means. One was a well-known leader in $1.50 retail stock . . .”

• 1906: “no one will deny that cheap ‘kike’ competition has been the greatest menace to legitimate industry in this department.”

• 1907: “price-cutting has been done on cheap or ‘Kike’ goods”

• 1909: “True, unfortunately, there are a number of people in the business who can buy large quantities of the so-called ‘kike’ stripe, although there are others who are not ‘kikes’ that are guilty of everything that is heaped upon that poor unfortunate.”

• 1910: “note the start and patronize what are known as the ‘kike’ tailors. These foreigners come over here with a knowledge of their trade, capable of doing the most elegant work often, but they are unreliable largely because they know so little of business. . . . The buyer who knows how to deal with such people while they are still ‘kikes’ is well prepared to buy for bargain sales and exceptional offerings.”

• 1911: “The ‘kike’ element has got in its work in that direction just as it has in the line of fabric, or cut, underwear, and producers who do not stand high as manufacturers have loaded their agencies with goods of which jobbers are fighting shy while filling out their orders for fall.

• 1912: “when the athletic and other forms of the cut goods were in the first rush of popularity, every ‘kike’ who could borrow twenty-five dollars and a sewing machine went into their manufacturing and cheapened the garments down to 25 cents and 35 cents retail.”

• 1912: “There is an atmosphere of respect and confidence pervading a concern which does business legitimately and demands the same of its customers. A new concern, or small concern, trying to crawl into favor by allowing illegitimate claims is not headed correctly. . . . The ‘kike’ is always a ‘kike’ until he gets past these notions.”

• 1914: “I should say for the benefit of English readers that illiterate Russians and Russian Jews are called Kikes, illiterate Italians are ‘Wops,’ Hungarians are ‘Hunkies.’”

• 1916: “Worst of all, the ‘kike’ competitors kept on multiplying like the locusts of the fields and on account, as the associated firms charged, of sub rosa deals made with the men.”

• 1917: “You know who Mr. Levinsky is, don’t you? It isn’t some kike. It’s David Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer.”

• 1919: “we wouldn’t call him a Kike even though his father was a Russian Hebrew”

While these instances may vary in the word’s interpretation, they nonetheless trace a clear connection back to a common source: the clothing industry.

Conclusions

In this article we pinpointed an earlier definition of kike, originally a popular variant of “keek,” from the Scots for “peek.” At the turn of the 20th century, this word was being used within the American clothing scene to describe the illicit practice of stealing competitors’ original designs to undercut them with knockoffs. As Jewish immigrants begin to saturate the labor market, transform its structure, and perceptibly lower its standard of business ethics (as poor, desperate workers in large enough quantities are wont to do) the word easily becomes associated with them. From there, kike leaves the industry and becomes a common, derogatory way to refer to Jews of Eastern European background.

As time goes on, and as these types of Jews come to furnish the great majority of American Jews overall, it’s easy to see how kike becomes the slur for Jews in general. While Rosten’s “kikels” explanation may have reinforced the term by sheer coincidence, it’s hard to dismiss the existence of this independent meaning in the same industry to which 20th-century Jews were inextricably linked as incidental, and the documentary backing is clear. In the end, considering all the evidence, can there be any more doubt as to the word’s ultimate origin? The logomachy may carry on, but as far as I’m concerned the mystery is no more.

Riffling through the pages of some of the above-cited journals and magazines corroborates the well-documented prevalence of ownership by New York’s elite minority. The adverts are bursting at the seams with German Jewish surnames:

Cloaks and Furs, Vol. XXXIII, No. 6

These Jews would have been the first to notice the entrance of their Eastern cousins, and the first to disapprove, finding them offensive to their Yekkish sensibilities.⁵ Recall JHA Lacher’s words from the 20s:

Here they forthwith offered keen competition to their brethren of German origin, who soon insisted that the business ethics and standard of living and culture of these Russians were far lower than theirs.

Indeed, the inferior ethics of these new arrivals in particular is a recurring theme. One final reference, from a German Jewish author in 1927, spells it out as follows:

German Jews avoided Polish and Russian Jews, whose struggle for mere existence in persecutory countries had forced them to develop shrewdness without ethics. They were unfair competition for the ethical Germans who always obeyed the letter and often the spirit of the law. So the Germans detested their tireless craftiness, which had no restraints, and called them Polacks and Kikes and excluded them from the charity boards, the social and financial indexes of New York Jewry.

While the word was not a novel creation on the basis of Jewish language or surnames, it is thus reasonable to trace its anti-Jewish connotations back to the German Jewish community in New York. But it would be incorrect to pass this off as mere elitism or selfishness on their part; I feel it’s necessary to add a brief aside here.

More than distasteful, the German Jews identified this crowd as a tangible challenge to their hard-earned standing in polite society, and among non-Jews in general. As mentioned earlier, an identical predicament was seen within Germany itself, whose Jews felt personally threatened by the ongoing mass migration of Ostjuden — poor, unassimilable, and strange — which only added fuel to an already inflamed antisemitism. They rightfully understood any such threat to be existential, and this amplified their scorn and contempt. While their American counterparts were in a far less precarious situation, this third and largest wave of Jewish immigration would see antisemitism first emerge in American society as a serious force.

For the Jews of Western and Central Europe, this had been the quandary ever since their introduction into gentile societies. Remaining in good favor necessitates a delicate balancing act, riddled with anxieties. For this reason, intra-communal tensions have always been a staple of Jewish life, whether German contra Russian; its successor, Reform contra Haredi; or its predecessor, Sephardi contra German. As an aforementioned issue of The American Hebrew reminds us:

Time was in this country when the Spanish and Portuguese Jews formed themselves into exclusive social circles in which the German Jew was not welcome. Now the German Jew is frequently mightily ungenerous in his treatment of his poorer brethren, the Russian and Polish Jew, who are now coming to this country, as he himself once came

All this is to say that the German reaction was not unique, or even totally without justification, and kike is therefore another interesting example of these tensions. But it is nevertheless deeply ironic that this private feud, fueled by concern for antisemitism, should result in the most popular anti-Jewish term of abuse to this day.

1. For the etymological accounts I rely on in this post, see HL Mencken’s The American Language, 4th ed. (1949, 295–6) and its first supplement (1945, 613–16); also Rosten (1968, 181–2); Feinsilver (1971, 321); Tamony (1978); Allen (1983, 121–3) provides the most detailed account; also see Liberman’s 2009 article

2. Mencken noted that “Kike is used to distinguish a Russian, Polish or other Eastern Jew from the German Jew.” Rosten, Feinsilver, and Tamony all concur.

3. e.g., here and here

4. Rebecca Kobrin’s Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism, see chapter two

5. While I’m specifically commenting on the negative aspect, the German Jewish reaction was ambivalent rather than uniform. Publicity surrounding the Eastern European pogroms generated genuine sympathies; HIAS would be founded by German Jews to aid the mass migration of Ostjuden to America.