A traditional French insult for the English is “** pomme de terre avec le visage d'un cochon d’inde**” “Potato with the face of a Guinea pig” Shortened to simply “ Pomme de Terre” “Potato” because the French considered the English, dirty, boring and common. The first written reference to the English being referred to as Pommies (Poms) is contained in letters written from the front lines and trenches of France in 1916. Note: the word Egyptian later became gypsy, at that time they believed all gypsies came from Egypt and gypsies were executed as fortune telling and other ways of conning people of their money, etc. During that time in England, murderers, rapists, conmen, Egyptians, etc. To dispel another myth, there were no hardened criminals shipped to Aus. along with the convicts so again both above-mentioned acronyms are incorrect as these English were not prisoners. English seamen, captains, generals, prison guards, farm labourers, domestic servants, etc. so both above-mentioned acronyms are incorrect as pom would include all those that were not English. Also purged from England were Scots, Welsh, blacks, jews, etc. (Prisoner of Her Majesty and Prisoner of Mother England respectively), otherwise we'd be calling them pomes as both acronyms are pronounced 'pome' The convict scheme was one way for England to rid itself of the non-English and Catholic so many prisoners were Irish. Pom was never an abbreviation of P.O.H.M nor P.O.M.E. A person from England, usually caucasian.
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