The word nigger has historically been used in the names of products, colors, plants, as place names, and as people's nicknames, among others, but has fallen out of favor since the 20th century.
Commercial products
The word nigger was often featured in branding and packaging consumer products. In 1925, the Matthes Coal and Construction Company was marketing "Niggerhead Coal" as more efficient and a better buy than soft coal. Bouclé fabric was called "niggerhead" in advertisements. An Australian company produced various sorts of licorice candy under the "Nigger Boy" label. These included candy cigarettes and one box with an image of an Indian snake charmer. Compare these with the various national varieties and names for chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, and with Darlie, formerly Darkie, toothpaste. As the term became less acceptable in mainstream culture, product names were changed. "Nigger Hair Tobacco" became "Bigger Hair", and "Niggerhead Oysters" became "Negro Head".
Plant and animal names
Some colloquial or local names for plants and animals used to include the word "nigger" or "niggerhead.” One of the colloquial names for echinacea (coneflower) was "niggerhead.” The cotton-top cactus (Homalocephala polycephala, syn. Echinocactus polycephalus) is a round, cabbage-sized plant covered with large, crooked thorns, and used to be known in Arizona as the "niggerhead cactus". In the early 20th century, double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) were known in some areas of Florida as "nigger geese". In some parts of the U.S., Brazil nuts were known as "nigger toes". Red cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) was sometimes called "niggerhead cabbage" in the United States, and in Britain at least as recently as the 1980s. The "niggerhead termite" (Nasutitermes graveolus) is a native of Australia. The butterfly Orsotriaena medus had historically been called "the nigger", referring to its dark brown colour, but it has been renamed in Australian faunal works to "smooth-eyed bushbrown", "medus brown" in India, and "dark grass-brown" in Southeast Asia. The black Labrador dog owned by Guy Gibson, Squadron Leader of RAF 617 Squadron, 'The Dam Busters', was called Nigger. In 21st-century re-runs on UK (at least) TV, scenes in which the dog's name is mentioned are cut. The dog was run over outside the airfield, and in 2020 a memorial at the spot was replaced with one on which the dog's name is not mentioned. American cosmic horror author H.P. Lovecraft's black cat was called Nigger-man. Lovecraft owned the cat from childhood until its death in 1904. Lovecraft also used the name for a fictional cat in The Rats in the Walls, first published in 1924.
Colors A shade of dark brown used to be known as "nigger brown" or simply "nigger"; other colours were also prefixed with the word. Usage for colors continued for some time after it was no longer acceptable for people. Nigger brown commonly identified a colour in the clothing industry and advertising of the early 20th century.
Nicknames of people
During the Spanish–American War U.S. Army General John J. Pershing's original nickname, Nigger Jack, given to him as an instructor at West Point because of his service with "Buffalo Soldier" units, was euphemized to Black Jack by reporters. In the first half of the twentieth century, before Major League Baseball was racially integrated, many darker-complexioned players were nicknamed Nig; examples are: Johnny Beazley (1941–49), Joe Berry (1921–22), Bobby Bragan (1940–48), Nig Clarke (1905–20), George Cuppy (1892–1901), Nig Fuller (1902), Johnny Grabowski (1923–31), Nig Lipscomb (1937), Charlie Niebergall (1921–24), Nig Perrine (1907), and Frank Smith (1904–15). The 1933 movie The Bowery with George Raft and Wallace Beery includes a sports bar in New York City named "Nigger Joe's". In 1960, a stand at the stadium in Toowoomba, Australia, was named the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand", honoring 1920s rugby league player Edwin Brown, ironically nicknamed because of his pale white skin; his tombstone is engraved Nigger. Stephen Hagan, a lecturer at the Kumbari/Ngurpai Lag Higher Education Center of the University of Southern Queensland, sued the Toowoomba council over the use of nigger in the stand's name; the district and state courts dismissed his lawsuit. He appealed to the High Court of Australia, who ruled the naming matter beyond federal jurisdiction. At first, some Aboriginal Australians did not share Hagan's opposition to nigger. Hagan appealed to the United Nations, winning a committee recommendation to the Australian federal government, that it force the Queensland state government to remove the word nigger from the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" name. The Australian federal government followed the High Court's jurisdiction ruling. In September 2008, the stand was demolished. The Queensland Sports Minister, Judy Spence, said that using nigger would be unacceptable, for the stand or on any commemorative plaque. The 2005 book The N Word: One Man's Stand by Hagan includes this episode. In South Sudan, people who are affiliated with local street gangs or local street gangs themselves are called "niggers".
Place names Many places once had names that included the word "nigger", sometimes named after a person, or a historical event, or for a perceived resemblance of a geographic feature to a human being (see Niggerhead). Most of these place names have long since been changed. The majority of places with the word in their name were located in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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