Many people say Pom (or Pome) stands for “Prisoner of Mother England”. This is just an urban myth. It rings true – and so it is a successful urban myth - because many of the first European Australians truly were convicts sent out of London.

According to the Australian National Museum the word only came into use in 1912 – long after the era of convict deportations.

Pom and Pommy came about because the hot Australian sun turned most of the people arriving from the UK as red as the inside of pomegranates. So instead of calling UK migrants ‘immigrants’, they were jokingly called ‘pomigrants’.

Pomigrant was then shortened to Pom or Pommy and the nickname stuck.