Allow Me to Ruin Every WWII Movie for You

Nazis, Nachos, Fascists and Fajitas

Back when Twitter was good, I did a thread on one of the stranger etymologies I’ve come across. A tweet thread is not an essay, though, and this topic is interesting enough that I wanted to flesh it out a little and share more. Plus I learned more (uh, fascinating) stuff since then. And I wanted to wrest the thread out of Elon’s clammy fingers and put it in a better place. Also, I wanted to ruin most WWII movies for you, for the rest of your life.

A couple of spoilers: The words “Nazi” and “nacho” come from the same source; and Nazis absolutely did not call themselves “Nazis.”

Let’s Start with St. Ignatius

The fellow in the picture is St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), who founded the Society of Jesuits and also helped popularize the name Iganatius and its various forms (Ignaz, Ignacz, Inácio, Inigo, I guess eventually Iggy) around Europe. There were other St. Ignatiuses before him (St. Ignatius of Antioch was martyred in Rome in 108 CE), but this was our main guy:

Since Ignatius of Loyala he was Basque/Spanish, his given name was actually Iñigo. (My Twitter thread had some very passionate people trying to claim him as either a Basque or a Spaniard; I’m not going near that one.)

One of the reasons he's a saint is that he had visions of snakes when he was in the hospital. He saw something that "seemed to have the shape of a serpent and had many things that shone like eyes, but were not eyes... When the object vanished he became disconsolate." Good enough for me! Make that man a saint and name a bunch of colleges after him! (Kidding, kidding. I know he is very important and also the patron saint of Chicago collegiate basketball.)

Anyway, the name remained popular. (Also as a last name. My Hungarian grandmother's last name was Ignácz, so I've got a horse in this race. Or, like, a snake in this hospital. More on that below.)

Nachos

Okay, so nachos first, and I think more people know this part of the story: This lovely man, Ignacio Anaya Garcia, went by Nacho.

I’ll admit that the first time I met someone named “Nacho,” as a teenager, I assumed it was a cute nickname for a person who once had an infamous night at a Tex-Mex restaurant or something. But (as many of you know, not being dim teenagers), it’s a common nickname for Ignacio.

According to a few sources online, the theory goes that when Ignacio de Loyola traveled to Rome in 1538 to see the Pope, the Italians pronounced his name “Ignacho” instead of “Ignatzio,” and it stuck as a nickname in a general way. That seems convoluted, but sure.

Anyway: Nacho Garcia was working at a restaurant in Texas near the border and in 1943 a bunch of hungry army wives came in, but the chef was out, so Nacho threw a bunch of stuff together and they loved it, and then there were nachos throughout the land, hallelujah.

But MEANWHILE, in Germany...

Over the years, Ignaz (pronounced Ignatz) became a popular name in Germany and the vicinity. “Nazi,” a common nickname for Ignaz, somehow become a pejorative, connoting an uneducated peasant. Basically, it was the "Cletus" or “Bubba” of early 20th century Germany.

There was (and still is) a left-wing German political party called the Social Democratic Party of Germany (but, like, in German). As an abbreviation of Sozialdemokrat, members were called Sozis (pronounced Sotzis).

Enter the Nationalsozialisten (National Socialist) party. (In German, that would be pronounced nat-zi-o-nal etc.) You might know them from such members as the very short Joseph Goebbels and the one-nutted man-child Adolf Elizabeth Hitler.

People quickly realized that a great way to mock the National Socialists was to abbreviate their name to parallel Sozi—which made them "Nazis," AKA Cletuses.

Here's a useful graphic that I did not make. I like it, but it leaves off the nickname-for-Ignaz part:

In the early days of the party, a few members embraced it—kind of like Trumpsters calling themselves Deplorables. One of Goebbels’ earliest publications was an essay called “Der Nazi-Sozi,” and presumably he was leaning into the joke a little. But Hitler had NO sense of humor about it, so Goebbels quickly cut it out.

After Hitler came to power, Austrian anti-Nazis continued to use the term (basically making the Cletus joke) and then it spread to the US and elsewhere. But using it in Germany would be asking to get shot.

When referring to themselves, Nazis would use the term Parteigenosse (m) or Parteigenossin (f), meaning "party member." As for the party itself, they would have called it the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party) or NSDAP.

Now Let’s Ruin Movies!

This brings me to my huge historical pet peeve, which I want to put out there for anyone writing historical fiction or a screenplay or whatever: Nazis DID NOT CALL THEMSELVES that, and probably should not call themselves that in your fictional bunker either.

Now that you know, see how many times you're watching a movie and some Nazi official is like "We are proud Nazis!" or "Here in Nazi Germany..."

But I also fucking LOVE that neo-nazis who call themselves that are unwittingly insulting themselves. It's perfection.

I'm normally a "call people what they ask to be called" person, but in this case it's honestly fantastic that those guys will forever be remembered by their pejorative nickname. It's like if in 100 years everyone thought Trump's real name was Mango Mussolini.

But we’re not done with the Tex-Mex, or with dildos…

When I posted this on Twitter, someone pointed out that in a strange parallel, the words “fascist” and “fajita” come from the same root as well. “Fascist” comes from the Latin fascio, meaning a bundle of sticks, which of course somehow come to mean authoritarianism, why not. “Fajita” is a diminutive of the Spanish faja, meaning a strip or a band, which in turn comes from fascio as well.

The Roman bundles of sticks that started it all.

Fascitis (as in plantar fascitis) comes from the same root, as does a common slur for gay men, and the British “fag” for cigarette.

The word “fascinate” likely comes from the same root, via a way more fun road. The Latin fascino meant “to bewitch”; this in turn most likely came from fascinum, which was a dildo. The connection there was most likely phallus-shaped amulets hung around the neck as deterrents against witchcraft.

Here’s a bewildering quote from Petronius’s Satyricon, in the first century CE: Prōfert Oenothea scorteum fascinum, quod ut oleō et minūtō pipere atque ū̆rtīcae trītō circumdedit sēmine… Meaning: Then Oenothea takes out a leather dildo and, having covered it in oil, pepper and ground nettle seeds… This is where the quote stopped in the source I found and I am kind of dying to know what happens next and also really do not want to know what happens next.

I promise you’re going to have more fun checking out the fascinators at royal weddings now that you have this information.

Let's put a moral on the story.

When you find yourself living through the 1940s, you can either be such a dick that the world will forget your real name, or you can melt some cheese and be a nice guy and make the world better.

(Nacho had a better mustache, too.)

After the paywall, more on my personal connection to this all and one more delightful fact…