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Max: << coincidentally, I was looking up the word sawney only this morning. My father used the word of a person to mean rather moronic. to my surprise it is a diminutive of Alexander and applies to Scots, not morons. >> I think Sawney is a dismissive term for anyone in the gaeltacht (though strictly speakers would employ Lallans or Anglo-Irish rather than Erse). "Sandy" would be the normal diminutive of "Alexander". [Curiously, one of the earliest Scottish poems begins, "Whan that Alexander our king was deid ..." and goes on to lament the effects of sub-prime mortgage event on the economy of Scotland when Sandy rode his horse off the edge of a cliff in a fog. Makes you profoundly to wonder, but. Whirligig of time, and that ... R.] Robin (for the Black Gang)