No one has ever called me a yank, however when they hear I'm from California my nickname is automatically Dude.
The Dude
And I think Holliday G was referring to the New England area Red Socks fans. I still don't see how any self respecting person can lower their standards so low as to call themselves a yankees fan.
Sorry, I meant Gummihals! I'm doing about a trillion things at once here! It's more like Rubber neck I would say but nobody I know knows why they call them that!!!!!
Gummihals is a new insult I think. The explanations that I've found so range from "less guttural dialect", the English meaning of rubberneck (gaper), to "nodding yes men".
Really? I could only approximate it to the English term but I could not understand what that had to do with Germans. I don't think it is so new though - it's a term that my father-in-law used to use and he wasn't one for change but even he did not know where the term came from.
Back to topic, I've just remembered a great term for the French which I think comes from The Simpsons - Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys! Fantastic! And whilst on the subject of the French, I learned at the weekend that the Swiss say "auf französisch gehen" to mean that someone has gone without saying goodbye, to sneak away so to speak. Looks like the whole world sees the French the same! Ha ha!
just goes to show that we probably ARE boring I know gajilion of names we tag each other with, usually has to do with which canton one comes from etc.. I haven't heard of a general nickname for us as a nation.
Someone's(I think Steveli's) father -in-law quotes the Swiss as saying "gehen auf französisch" meaning leaving without taking leave. He might not know that the French say "filer à l'anglaise" with exactly the same meaning!
It was me that wrote that but not my father-in-law who said it (he said about Gummihals). I heard the phrase for the first time this weekend. I did NOT know about the French saying that about us! Very interesting! Thanks for the info, one lives and one learns!
The canton codes also have their own secret nicknames, eg...
AG = achtung gefahr
ZH = zero hospitality
etc...
Getting back to the original question though, I've only heard the Swiss called swissies, or (rarely) yodellers. Even the money is sometimes referred to as swissies.