Pauly_1

So who knows where this originates?

brits1

Hi I have found this in a newspaper article (Australian)

By 1912 another rhyming slang term for ‘immigrant’ had appeared: pomegranate(also written as pommygranate and Pommy Grant). In the same year the first evidence for two abbreviations of pomegranate—pom and pommy—can also be found. Pomegranate (along with its variants) and jimmygrant coexisted for some time.

Prior to that immigrants were called:

An early, derisory term for an immigrant in Australia was the rhyming slang jimmygrant (sometimes written as Jimmy Grant), recorded in 1844. Jimmygrant was further abbreviated in the 1870s to jimmy:

So it really has nothing to do with Prisoners etc as Poms started to be heard after conviction prisoners ceased, which I always did find bizarre when I was called a Pom by an Australian born person.

Pauly_1

On the contrary actually.

I'd been led to believe it was POME and Prisoner of Mother England. Also heard the pomegranate one but it is actually relating to prisoners. They was kept in the Millbank prispn in London before being shipped to Australia. The ships all had identification on the front and the ships bringing the said prisoners had POM on the front.

Prisoners of Millbank.

Been in Australia 17 years and only found this out the other day lol

brits1

I was called a Pom quite often by born and bred Aussies I use to find this a strange thing to say really as they were (for the most) really calling their past relatives, where as I had no family connection to convicts sent to Australia in the past.