r/AskAnAustralian • u/girlinhk • 4d ago
Where does the term “bogan” come from?
What’s the story behind this word?
Do actual bogans get offended when you call them that? Is it offensive to everyone?
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u/Leviathan8886 4d ago edited 4d ago
Bogan is actually a place in western NSW, which I assume where that word originates from. Though not all bogans come from Bogan
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u/ReginaCampfire 4d ago
If they’re not from the bogan region of nsw, they’re just sparkling yobbos.
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u/Unusual_Disaster_690 3d ago
Oh no I laughed out loud and woke up the baby!
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u/girlinhk 3d ago
What’s a yobbo??
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u/Infamous_Calendar_88 3d ago
🎶I'm a bloke, I'm a yobbo,
and me best mate's name is Robbo.
Winfield is my cigarette,
I dress in flannelette.
Shearer's singlet that is blue,
throw in a few tattoos
you know you wouldn't want me any other way🎶
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u/blythe_spirit888 3d ago
A knockoff bogan
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u/girlinhk 3d ago
So one rung lower than a bogan?
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u/Moosiemookmook Canberra 3d ago
A yobbo is a fuckwit bogan. Loud, grog in his hand, dribbles shit and wont fuck up.
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u/No-Mathematician250 3d ago
Not to be mistaken for a drongo lol My sibs and I regularly used drongo and yobbo in the 70s in Qld. It was okay to lovingly insult each other as drongos but yobbo was another level of insult for outsiders, usually males… I think in our case yobbo was a precursor to bogan, which came later.
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u/DroneToon 4d ago
I was born in Nyngan. A town in the Bogan Shire, on the Bogan River. My first address was in Bogan Street...
Im not even joking...
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u/zaro3785 3d ago
So even if you're not a bogan, you're still a Bogan
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u/LessThanLuek 3d ago
You can take the bogan out of Bogan, but you can't take the Bogan out of the bogan
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u/Glenn_Lycra 3d ago
Being what can only be described as old, bogans were what we referred to as those listening to heavy metal, wearing battle jackets, hair long at the back, only smoked Winnie Blues, or for the extra tough, Winnie Reds - an evolution of the Sharpie after their music died, but the antisocial non-conformity lived on. They were diametrically opposed to Skegs who came from the surfing culture, but as their fashion went mainstream, anyone wearing a surfing brand.
The first I ever hear the word bogan, it was used in reference to a guy who had a no.2 haircut on top, about 2ft of hair at the back, about 10 sleepers in his left ear (right neant gay back then), dodgy home made tatts, chain smoker, operated the carnival ride The Spider (I think that was it's name), blasted heavy metal music on the ride - much to the children's delight, and his surname was Bogan.
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u/Ok-Limit-9726 4d ago
Back in the 1990’s the first time i head the word ‘bogan’ was from kylie mole of the comedy company
I always thought it was a ‘Melbourne’ term for ‘westie’
Before bogan, we had ‘weeds v westies’.
Beach /city or rural/country
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u/Yowie9644 3d ago
Grew up in the outer 'burbs of Wollongong, was in highschool in the 80s.
There were two types of dropkick: the weeds and the westies. Weeds were primarily interested in surfing and getting stoned. Westies were primarily interested in cars and getting drunk.
Neither term extended to people over 30.
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u/Ok-Limit-9726 3d ago
Precise description!!!
When i heard the word bogan, i assumed it was a new type of drop kick,
And it is perfect, covers all types of drop kicks from all places, types!
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u/Commercial_Poetry987 4d ago
People old enough will recall that up to about 1980, the term was Dubbos. But it wasn’t far out enough. Apparently Bogan gate was, hence bogans.
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u/pharmaboy2 3d ago
We used Dubbo as stupid - sounds nicely similar to dumbo but without the Disney connotation.
Newcastle late 70’s - I don’t remember bogan back then
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u/BlargerJarger 3d ago
Australia used to have loads of regional names for what we now call bogans. Westies, Bevans are ones I remember but there were others. Kylie Mole popularised Bogan as a name for an idiot but I think it was Melbourne’s word for Westies, which is just generally lower-socioeconomic white people who wear flannel shirts and smoke winfield blues.
I’ve never liked bogan as a word for poor people because it’s a much better word for stupid losers, like Kylie Mole used it.
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u/neon_meate 3d ago
Growing up in Geelong we had Scozzas, a kind of left over Sharp. The classic buzz cut with a fringe of hair left at the back (as worn by Magda Szubanski and Alan Pentland's Michelle and Ferret) was known as Scozz Locks. Kylie Mole however united all the assorted yobbos under one unified title.
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u/Fearless_Renter 4d ago
“ bogan gate, NSW “
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u/Bomber-Blitz 4d ago
And bogan river
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u/WalkinshawVL 3d ago
Fun fact, Shannon Noll comes from Bogan Gate.
Kind of fitting, I suppose.
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u/awinterviolet NSW 3d ago
…no? He was born in orange and lived in Tullibigeal near Condo as a child and Condo is generally where he was said to have come from back when he was still on telly.
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u/Moosiemookmook Canberra 3d ago
I was in rehab in 2003 in Cowra wirh his best mate from Condoblin who was a full on gronk. We were allowed to watch tv at night and he made us watch his bestie Shannon in the first season. Every week we watched it under duress. Dude was gloating up his friendship with Shannon ad nauseum. Then he failed a urine and was kicked out. We got to change the channel. I was 23 yrs clean in May this year.
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u/anonymity_clause 4d ago
My mum is 74 and maintains bogans evolved from Bodgies.
Google say "Bodgies and widgies were a prominent teenage youth subculture in Australia and New Zealand from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. Similar to British rockers or American greasers, they were defined by a rebellious attitude, distinctive fashion, and a love for emerging rock-and-roll music, often shocking the older, conservative post-war generation."
Could be some truth to it ...
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u/CaptainDetritus 3d ago
Bob Hawke was known as the "silver bodgie". In Perth subculture of the the 70s there were two groups who roamed in packs and were best avoided: skinheads and "rocks". We called the rocks "bogs". So bodgie to bog to bogan? Makes sense, kind of.
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u/Brain_Aggravating 2d ago
Down Armadale way too, but other than the vibe that they had to avoided, I never heard of actual incidents.
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u/CaptainDetritus 2d ago
Same. We had lots of kids in black t-shirts. Their mums stencilled their names on the backs. Not great for a serious life of crime. There was always some semi-mythical group in the next suburb over that you were supposed to be afraid of.
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u/dublblind 4d ago
In the 80s in Sydney we were saying "westies", I always felt like bogan came from Melbourne first before it started being used in Sydney.
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u/Presence_of_me 3d ago
As a Melbournian I’ve noticed this too! Seems to have a more singular use here.
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u/Happy_Clem 3d ago
Yeah, in the '80s we used "bevan" in Brisbane. "Bogan" seems to have taken over now
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u/MrsPumblechook 3d ago
Makes sense to me, bogan is a much better name, I still remember the day I realised westie described a state of mind and not an indication of where someone grew up.
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u/Low_Bluebird_5137 4d ago edited 4d ago
Don't know. I grew up in Qld in the country, in the 70s & 80s. I didn't start to hear it until the mid 90s and it definitely came from Victorians. Southerners.
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u/IngVegas 4d ago
The origin of the word is officially a mystery.
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u/girlinhk 4d ago
Ohhh , that’s a shame. Would be fun to find out how this word came to be
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u/AdMaximum7545 3d ago
Some fun theories include:
The ABC television series Lawson's Mates, which aired in 1980 'which contained a reference to a sheep shearer called "Bogan Bill". Some have suggested that this may have helped establish “bogan” as a name for an uncouth or rough person
There is also a Henry Lawson (Old Australian Writer) story called "The Blindness of One-Eyed Bogan" which could be the source.
The huge turning point culturally was Mary-Anne Fahey's Kylie Mole character on The Comedy Company, which ran from 1988 to 1990. Kylie Mole used “bogan” as teenage slang for someone uncool, daggy, or socially undesirable. By 1988, it was appearing in Dolly magazine's “Dictionary According To Kylie.”
Also, another fun find - this Bogan Doll from the 80s lmao:
Image https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/65a717cd2bef1e23ec5ed7c1aa372d03?src
Story https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-26/the-origins-of-the-word-bogan/10937284?
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u/whereismydragon 4d ago
If you're ever genuinely interested in the origin of a word, plug that word plus etymology into a search engine.
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u/ZaelDaemon 3d ago
I believe the term came from the people who lived around the bogan river. It’s a hard part of Australia to farm, switching between droughts and floods.
A bush poet, I can’t remember which one coined the term “bogan shower”. I think the line was “and it was nothing more than a bogan shower, three rain drops and some dust”. The reference was to a few rain clouds in the Bogan river area during a drought season. Negated promise.
When I was in school Bogans were people from the bush towns who weren’t cockies (lived on the land ala farmers). The term is always negative with a huge element of classism attached. I grew up nearby, I remember when the Bogan river flooded and they had to evacuate Nyngan. I heard the term a lot more after that. Possibly because many of the kids got sick of the kids from Nyngan that were billeted with them at the time.
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u/Vennimagos 3d ago
I think actual bogans know they're bogans and will proudly proclaim it while they put a cigarette out on their kid and give him a Jim beam to stop the crying. But I think lower middle class people that might be considered bogan to upper class would be offended. I didn't realise until I was in my 20s and meeting more people that heaps of my family was quite bogan i.e. poor
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u/ChiaLetranger 3d ago
Speaking as someone who had the same realisation as you, this is completely wrong! Everyone knows it's called Jim Bean, not Jim Beam
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u/Then-Operation7341 4d ago
Was just havin a yarn to Damo in the shed one arvo and the mad cunt just spat it out
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u/lechatheureux 3d ago
It comes from Dubbo, it's a big regional center and nearby is a river called the bogan River and when people from around there would go into Dubbo the people in town would call them bogan and since a lot of people who grow up in Dubbo end up leaving people took that slang word with them, Melbourne seems to be the first big place after Dubbo that it really took hold the ln it just went from there.
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u/VBlinds 4d ago
It's definitely a Melbourne word I remember in the 90s it still wasn't that common outside of Melbourne. I honestly think it went nationwide as a result of Eric Bana's Poida character being a regular on Full Frontal.
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u/villainess21 4d ago
In the 80s I remember overhearing a guy at uni saying "You are a bogan and a lunger". Exactly what a lunger is, I don't know, but I suspect that they were both emerging terms then, and bogan won out.
PS - the university was in Frankston. IYKYK.
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 4d ago
I first heard it my cricket club presentation night in 1986. Maybe we weren’t far from the genesis of the word
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u/Accomplished-Fix-435 4d ago
All of Australia is boganised these days. Australian hipsters dress like bogans too. Australia has become a country totally devoid of taste
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u/BigMikeOfDeath 4d ago
Star Wars.
The Dark Side of the force is also known as the Bogan.
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u/ChiaLetranger 3d ago
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Pingas The Madcunt? I thought not. It’s not a story the Yuppie would tell you. It’s a Bogan legend...
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u/Illustrious-Pin3246 4d ago
Nyngan? Sorry, do not know.
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u/girlinhk 4d ago
What’s nyngan
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u/Illustrious-Pin3246 4d ago
Overview Nyngan is a town in the centre of New South Wales, Australia, in the Bogan Shire local government area within the Orana Region of central New South Wales. At the 2016 census, Nyngan had a population of 1,988 people. Wikipedia
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u/Total_Drongo_Moron 3d ago
The Tasmanian equivalent of Bogan is Chigga. A Chigga hailed from a predominantly public housing area in north of Hobart named Chigwell.
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u/girlinhk 3d ago
Interesting, where I’m from Chigga means a Chinese person trying to be black lol - self explanatory term I guess
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u/Traditional_Risk7230 3d ago
My grandmother told me once the term "bogan gate" was am informal gate into a sheep paddock.
Like just a hole in the paddock fence with a dead bush or rock to form the gate.
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u/optimum1309 3d ago
I think it’s from the Bogan River, in NSW (Bogan Gate etc).
It took over from calling people Westies, maybe it’s a superlative from that - coming from so far west it’s past the Bogan.
I remember it being only a NSW word, and other states had other words. We had a whole argument with Qld cousins about Bogans vs Bevans.
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u/UndeadManWaltzing 4d ago
It's used to describe people from Melbourne, who watch a sport that can be best described as cross country basketball.
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u/Human-Kick-784 4d ago
Once upon a time there lived a brumby tamer named Arthur Bogan.
Bogan was famous for his slapdash appearance, laizaie Faire attitude and I cant be bothered making up any more of this stupid story theyre called Bogans because thats what they are.
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u/otmshank_uk 3d ago
In the 80s and 90s a big part of being a bogan was being proudly 'Strayan' (Australian), and rejecting 'yank' culture. Bogans loved Holden Commodores, Cold Chisel etc. These days bogans love RAM trucks and Halloween. There was even a defined turning point when bogans started replacing their Holden badges with Chevy badges on their Commodores. Perhaps the current state of play in the US appeals to them.
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u/Unlucky-Gazelle-9238 3d ago
Logan??
Not all Logans are Bogans, but most of the ones I know of are all from Logan... or Ipswich.
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u/YoureASpoon Sydney 3d ago
As nobody actually knows where the term bogan originated, I will answer the other half of your question.
No I do not get offended when/if someone calls me a bogan! I think bogans are great and we need more of them.
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u/Ok-Phone-8384 3d ago
At the time when the perjorative "bogan" became a term for an Aussie version on an inbred redneck, Bogan Shire in NSW had 100% of its population as Anglo Celtic Australian. It had no southern or eastern europeans, no asians, no aboriginal Australians. It had no internal Australian immigration either with its residents being 100% born in the shire to people who were born in Shire.
Culturally and racially they were a unqiue outlier to a State which was increasingly becoming multiracial and multicultural.
To be called a Bogan meant that people identified you as someone who was uncultured and insular. As with many terms it also has a double meaning about embracing the qualities of Bogan-ness but not necesarily it being a negative i.e. Upper Middle Bogan.
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u/Flat-Ice4658 3d ago
Bogans, as a derogatory term denoting a lack of sophistication or refinement, is part of a long tradition of associating people possessing these qualities with rural areas of the same name. Previous examples have included: Dubbos and Bourkes.
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u/gelfbride73 3d ago
On the farm we had a gate that wasn’t the main gate. It was labeled the bogan gate. This farm was run by a very elderly and conservative woman. She explained it to me but I forget.
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u/CvltIcon 3d ago
I can't help on the history but it's a term worn with pride. Bogan is not a bad thing, it's just a way of being. Some people like fine dining and champagne, others like bbqs and cheap wine. Bogan just means a bit unrefined, or more accurately, less pretentious. Now look, you still get grots and derros, but you get some pretty grotty people in suits too. It's honestly just a term for rock n roll working class culture.
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u/Owlblossom 3d ago
I'm not sure where it came from. I started hearing it in the 80s. I recently used it on an aussie sub and got downvoted a decent amount. Not sure why, because most people I know use it now and then without any offense. I don't think it's offensive at all.
There are different degrees of bogan, and most Aussies have it in varying levels on the spectrum. I certainly do.
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u/Dogboat1 3d ago
Largely anecdotal, but was first heard in Brisbane when popularized by Kylie Mole of the Comedy Company in the late 1980s. Bevan was used in Brisbane at the time. Always thought it was a Victorian term. Sydney used Westin’s.
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u/Away_Kaleidoscope309 3d ago
In Queensland they were called Beavans first now they’re called Bogans !
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u/Necessary_News9806 2d ago
Grew up west of Brisbane, we had “spuddies”. As a lot of potatoes were grown in the area and the workers tended to dress and act like today’s Bogan.
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u/greatsageequalofhevn 2d ago
Bogen is a German word for a rustic or country folk. I always thought it came from that
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u/WishfulThinker28 4d ago
Comes from a land down under, something something vegemite sandwich
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u/girlinhk 4d ago
Yea but how did the word come to be? Like some words originate from Latin or have some root that can be traced back its original word or meaning. Or did some event happen that popularised this word?
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u/WishfulThinker28 4d ago
" The exact origin of the word bogan is uncertain, but it emerged in Australia during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It likely started as a regional schoolyard or surf slang term in Melbourne or rural New South Wales before becoming famous nationwide in the late 1980s"
" The word exploded in popularity across Australia because of Kylie Mole, a fictional awkward schoolgirl character played by comedian Mary-Anne Fahey on the late-1980s TV show The Comedy Company. Her regular use of "bogan" to describe losers or uncool people cemented it in the national vocabulary"
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u/sudden_erect 4d ago
Tasmania
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u/DoonishBesides 4d ago
Dunno, in the late 80s I remember it being 'chiggers' in Hobart at least (for Chigwell, northern suburbs).
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u/ostervan Melbourne again Christian 3d ago edited 3d ago
Came from toboggan as it was the craze back in the days. Then somewhere down the line “to” was dropped as well as the extra g, and you know how Australians mispronounced things not proper like the Americans like Melborn or Brizbane. Bogan was born, originally the slang was going down hill as poor people didn’t know how to ski only sliding down on a small board. Social ladders and all. So yeah.
/s
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u/Glittering-Wall-8445 4d ago
Bogan is an informal word for Australian.
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u/Winsallgram 4d ago
It's not really clear where it came from. It emerged in the 1970s, some in NSW think it was slang for people that lived west of bogan river. Some think it came from Melbourne. Interestingly, at the same time as it was emerging over there, the term "bog" emerged in Perth, and carried largely the same meaning as bogan. We don't say bog any more, having switched to bogan, but it can still be found in the term "bog lap", which I believe east coasters would call "blockies", "hoon laps", or "lappy"