Brummagem

Brummagem (and historically also Bromichan, Bremicham and many similar variants, all essentially "Bromwich-ham") is the local name for the city of Birmingham, England, and the dialect associated with it. It gave rise to the terms Brum (a shortened version of Brummagem) and Brummie (applied to inhabitants of the city, their accent and dialect, and frequently West Midlanders and their accents in general).

Brummagem and Brummagem ware are also terms for cheap and shoddy imitations, in particular when referring to mass-produced goods. This use is archaic in the UK, but persists in some specialist areas in the USA and Australia.

The word appeared in the Middle Ages as a variant on the older and coexisting form of Birmingham (spelled Bermingeham in Domesday Book), and was in widespread use by the time of the Civil War.

The term's pejorative use appears to have originated with the city's brief 17th-century reputation for counterfeited groats.

Birmingham's expanding metal industries included the manufacture of weapons. In 1637, a London cutler protested against the import of "Bromedgham blades", stating "they are no way serviceable or fit for his Majesty's store." John F. Hayward, an experienced historian on swords, suggests that London's snobbery towards these blades at that time was based on petty commercial rivalry; at that time London was the largest provider of weapons in Britain and Birmingham was fast becoming a viable commercial threat to their trade.

The word passed into political slang in the 1680s. The Protestant supporters of the Exclusion Bill were called by their opponents Birminghams or Brummagems (a slur, in allusion to counterfeiting, implying hypocrisy). Their Tory opponents were known as anti-Birminghams or anti-Brummagems.

Around 1690 Alexander Missen, visiting Bromichan in his travels, said that "swords, heads of canes, snuff-boxes, and other fine works of steel," could be had, "cheaper and better here than even in famed Milan."

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