what does Sassenach mean in Outlander ?

Sassenach means “stranger” , foreigner or “outlander,” and is a nickname that Jamie uses for Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser. It also refers to people of English descent. It can also be a derogatory term or insult , depending largely on how it is said and to whom . Special Offer – book your Lallybroch tour now for £32.50 per person .  Unique private and custom tour bookings for the autumn . Phone or Whatsapp us on +447305-294773 .  Availability is currently good for most autumn tours . If you are planning ahead for 2022 please contact us as we can now accept provisional bookings for next year .

Outlander‘s Claire Randall is called a number of unsavoury names ranging from witch to whore, but only one eventually becomes a term of endearment: Sassenach.

It means a foreigner. Actually, it’s a less than polite Gaelic word for an English person , but it’s nothing personal .

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So how did it become a kind of pet name for Jamie to call Claire ?

It all stems from the fact that Outlander author Diana Gabaldon wanted some Gaelic in her story .

“Very early on I began doing research as much as I could into Gaelic. While I don’t speak Gaelic by any stretch of the imagination, we want a few little terms and sentences scattered around to give a flavour of the language,” Gabaldon said

Sassenach was one of those key terms.

“Well, I had this English woman showing up, and I did know that Sassenach is in fact a fairly derogatory term for someone who is a foreigner, but specifically for an English person given the long and acrimonious relationship between England and Scotland. So, it seemed natural that someone would refer to Claire as a Sassenach,” she continued.

Jamie eventually takes up the term for her, but he doesn’t mean it as an insult.

“To start with, she has a slight idea that it’s a derogatory term, but she knows he’s plainly not trying to insult her. He’s just pointing out that she’s strange,” Gabaldon says.

“As time went on, he adopted it as a term of endearment for her, and because one of the things and only one of the things that attracts him to her, is that she is an English woman. He kind of likes to think of it as ‘I’ve got one of their women.'”

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