I think this is interesting. It's exactly the reverse in the USA -- say "shuffle" in the United States and most people think you mean overhand or riffle shuffle. In America what is called the Hindu Shuffle is used only by magicians or (according to Garrison Keeler in one of his stories about Lake Wobegon) big-time gamblers. It just looks unusual to Americans, and may make people suspicious, which makes me ambivalent about using it, though I do use it for card tricks, since it is so useful for that purpose.

I know that my friends from Iran use it, as do my friends from India. I've never played cards with anyone from the UAE, so I don't know how they shuffle.

When I was in the Army, my best friends were a guy in my unit and his wife, who was Korean. We used to play a Korean card game with cards about 1.5" X 2.5". The Hindu Shuffle was the standard shuffle with these cards. This was something I could do at a moderate speed as could my friend. His wife could shuffle them much faster. Oh, and because of my familiarity with the Hindu Shuffle, I quickly picked up on the fact that she ws using the shuffle to cheat outrageously LOL

The use "Hindu" is not a assault on the religion or a misunderstanding but originates to the word "Hindoo" (which is in fact an early spelling of "Hindu and Pronounced the same).

The meaning was simply "an abrorigonal (native) of Hindostan". Hindostan was an area that covered the present day Pakistan and some of India as well.

Reference to this word date back well over 150 years. I have found the word listed in American dictionaries in my collection dating back to the 1840's. I would imagine it to be present in British dictionaries before then.

Just as we are often referred to as "Americans", "Hindu's" was a common reference to natives of that part of the world, Jean Hugard's reference and Magics reference is correct and not in any way derogatory.

They were simply recognizing the origin of some of the effects they saw.

Don't forget we have many effects with "Hindu" in the titles. Indian performers were very popular in the early 20th century, and were being recognized for their contributions to our art.

Plus being all the rage many effects with no eastern origin were renamed to be "hip & now" as it were.

I wrote an even lengthier note about this subject, but this will suffice for now.

Regards,

M

No, that's the Frisbeetarians that believe that.

Of course you're correct Bill, I can't believe I wrote "Unitarian" insted of "Frisbeetarian".....not enough coffee before posting I guess.

Finding some old maps dating to the 1840's it seems the area of Hindostan (Hindoostan) was quite large, encompasing not only the area now known as Pakistan but most all of the upper 2/3 of India as well.

Just some more info......................

M

Check the entries under Hindoo, Hindu, Hinduism and Hindustan in the unabrided version of the Oxford English Dictionary. There is some interesting material there.

Alas, I am more of a Webster's American Dictionary man.

LOTS (and LOTS) to be found there also.

From his early examples from the 1820's through the mid 20th century (1940's). They fit more of my outward collecting and research proclivities.

Much of my varied and sundry collections are American in nature, and antique by age.

Where has the time all gone?!?!?!?!!!!!

M

The best part of the OED is that it gives the first appearance of every entry in print, along with an example of the usage from that document.

The word "Hindu" is actually realted to the Indus river which goes through the area usually referred to as Hindustan.

For a long time, the spellings Hindo, Hindoo, Hindou and Hindu were basically interchangeable. They referred to (variously) a person who lived in the area served by the Indus river and later to a person who had kept the Hindu religion when the rest of that area became Muslim. So what had been a term that indicated an ethnic group eventually referred to a person who practiced a specific religion.

Part of the reason that there have been so many different spellings has to do with the fact that it comes from a Farsi word that is spelled with what we call the Persian alphabet (which is basically the same as the Arabic alphabet, with a couple of additional letters in it). There were no hard and fast rules for transliterating these words into English.

Our practice of borrowing words from other languages and using the original spellings, if compatible with our alphabet, has contributed mightily to the nightmare called "English spelling." Most of our spelling is phonetic -- in the language we borrowed the word from!

A good example of how confusing this can be is the name of the Russian composer who wrote "The Nutcracker." If you wanted to look up one of his compositions in the Library of Congress, most of us would go over to the letter T for Tschaikowsky or we might look him up under Tchaikovsky, but the Library of Congress has adopted a standardized transliteration of Russian names which renders it as Chaikovski. The first spelling is the German transliteration, the second is the French. And even those are not consistent.