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In several English-speaking countries, Niggerhead or nigger head is a mostly no longer current name for several things thought to resemble a black person ("nigger")'s head.

The term was once widely used for all sorts of things, including products such as soap and chewing tobacco, but most often for geographic features such as hills and rocks. In the U.S., more than hundred "Niggerheads" and other place names now considered racially offensive were changed in 1962 by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but many local names remained unchanged.

As a technical term

"Niggerhead" was, among others:

• a former British term for a black iron post for mooring ships, made from an old cannon partially buried muzzle upward, with a slightly oversize black cannonball covering the hole
• a former sailors' term for an isolated coral head, notorious as navigation hazards
• among some American stonemasons, a term for a large smoothly rounded stone
• an antiquated term for a large round rock sticking up from the surface of a logging road, used by loggers and log truck drivers in the Pacific Northwest
• an old U.S. Navy term for a small winch, a Capstan
• a coal miner's term for blackish iron disulfide nodular rock occurring at the top of the coal seams, often visible in coal mine roofs. Because of their density, they can fall from the roofs, injuring or killing the miners below
• an archaic term for the striking weight on a pile driver
• a term for a steam manifold, fountain, turret or header on a boiler, particularly that of a locomotive

Plants and animals

"Niggerhead" is or was a common name for:

• Carex secta, a tussock grass in New Zealand
• Echinocactus polycephalus, the niggerhead cactus, native to California and Arizona
• Echinacea, or coneflower, colloquially called "Kansas niggerhead" or "wild niggerhead"
• Nasutitermes graveolus, the niggerhead termite, native to Australia
• Rudbeckia hirta, a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae
• hard tussocks in the tundra, esp. in Alaska

Places

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (October 2011)

"Niggerhead" is part of the name of:

• Nigger Head, an island in North Queensland, Australia
• Niggerhead hunting camp, the former name of a hunting camp of Texas governor Rick Perry, renamed to "North Camp Pasture" in about 2006 despite being owned by the family since the early 1980's.

References

1. ^ McCrummen, Stephanie (2 October 2011). "At Rick Perry's Texas hunting spot, camp's old racially charged name lingered". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 October 2011.