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Mackem is a term that refers to the accent, dialect and people of the Wearside area, or more specifically Sunderland, a city in North East England. Spelling variations include "Mak'em", "Makem", and "Maccam".
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Evidence suggests the term is a recent coinage. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which carried out a well-publicised search for references, the earliest occurrence of it in print was in 1988,[1] although the phrase "we still tak 'em and mak 'em" was found in a sporting context in 1973. This lends support to the theory that this phrase was the origin of the term Mackem, but there is nothing to suggest that "mak 'em" had come to be applied to people from Sunderland.
The name Mackem is often claimed to have been used by shipyard workers in the 19th century on the Tyne (see Geordie), to describe their Wearside counterparts. The Mackems would "make" the ship to be fitted out by the "Geordies", hence "mackem and tackem" ("make them" and "take them").[2] However, without any substantiated use of the phrase prior to the 1970s, this may well be a folk etymology.
Other variants include Sunderland workers who were encouraged to move to Teesside's shipyards for work, where the Teesside-based employers would "mack-em" ("make them") build the ships, or the local brewers Vaux who brewed a bottled beer called "Double Maxim". People who drank the beer would ask for a "Mackem" pronouncing the X differently; a person would be called a Mackem who drank the local beer. The term could also be a reference to the volume of ships built during wartime on the River Wear, e.g. "We mackem and they sink em". Alternatively, this phrase may refer to the making and tacking into place of rivets in shipbuilding, which was the main method of assembling ships until the mid-twentieth century.
The term has come to represent people who follow the local Premier League football team Sunderland AFC, and may have been invented for this purpose.[3] In recent years, people from around the outer city areas have also come to be known as Mackems, such as those from Houghton-le-Spring, Seaham, Boldon and Washington.[4]
Newcastle and Sunderland have a history of rivalry beyond the football pitch, dating back to the early stages of the English Civil War[5], the rivalry following on industrial disputes of the 19th Century and more recently political rivalries with the 1974 creation of Tyne and Wear County, which covered both cities until 1986.
'Mackem' refers to both the people of Sunderland and their accent.
It is worth noting that there is a small but noticeable difference in pronunciation between the accents of North and South Sunderland, for the word something it is not uncommon to hear a Mackem speaker from north Sunderland use summat whereas a south Sunderland speaker may often prefer summik.
To people from outside the region the differences between Mackem and Geordie accents often seem marginal; this is especially the case between the younger generations of North East England, but there are many notable differences.
See Category:People from Sunderland
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From the perceived difference in pronunciation of the words such as make and take between the folk of Newcastle upon Tyne (Geordies) and the folk of Sunderland, Geordies would say myek and tyek and Sunderland folk would say mak and tak hence the term mak and taks thus shortened to Makems.
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Mackem (plural Mackems)
The first definition would apply to those born within the city boundaries of Sunderland, including Washington, Houghton-le-Spring and Hetton-le-Hole. Additionally a person born within the greater Wearside Area to include all those towns and cities on the banks of the River Wear and its tributaries from its source in Weardale to its mouth at Wearmouth and the towns of the East Durham Coast from Blackhall, north through Peterlee, Horden, Easington, Seaham and Murton.
   | Mackem Accent - New entry for OED Online - Series One - Oxford English Dictionary |
| | BBC Wordhunt - Wordhunt appeal list - Balderdash Wordhunt - Oxford English Dictionary |
| | Mackem Accents - BBC - Lincolnshire - Blast - Where I Actually Live |
| | Mackem Talk - MySpace.com - Mackem Talk - 36 - Male - Sundeland, UK - myspace.com/mackemtalk |
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