{"id":48774,"date":"2026-07-12T01:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T01:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/48774\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T01:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T01:54:19","slug":"devon-polony-fritz-the-food-that-goes-by-a-half-dozen-different-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/48774\/","title":{"rendered":"Devon, polony, fritz: The food that goes by a half dozen different names"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you call that most basic of luncheon meats at the deli?<\/p>\n

You might have had it paired with tomato sauce on a white bread sandwich growing up, or maybe wrapped around a slice of cheese.<\/p>\n

The ubiquitous deli meat has been a staple of school lunches for decades, and the name you use for it could reveal a lot about where you grew up.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The deli meat sandwich has been an Australian lunchbox staple for decades. (ABC News: Stephen Clarke)<\/p>\n

Around Australia it is known by a variety of monikers including devon, fritz, polony, Belgium, Strasburg, Windsor sausage or bologna.<\/p>\n

Mark Gwynn, a senior researcher at the Australian National Dictionary Centre, said most of the names we know it by today can be traced back to a specific year.<\/p>\n

“Back in the 19th and early 20th century these would’ve been given German names like fritz and German sausage,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A supermarket delicatessen advertising “pork saveloys” in Queensland in the 1970s. (Supplied: State Library of Queensland)<\/p>\n

That was until World War I began in 1914.<\/p>\n

“Anything to do with Germany was not very politic,” Mr Gwynn said.<\/p>\n

“People avoided using terms like German sausage or fritz, and what we had was a whole suite of names that emerged to describe this sausage, and many of these [occurred] at the same time around the 1915 period.”<\/p>\n

On the east coast, and in keeping with the patriotic fervour of World War I, the meat became largely known as devon or Windsor sausage to reflect Australia’s links with the UK.<\/p>\n

\"Generic<\/p>\n

This deli meat goes by a range of different names across Australia, some dating back to the 19th century. (ABC News: Stephen Clarke)<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the only thing being re-named.<\/p>\n

“Just as the royal family changed their name, so too did we change the German sausage,” said Mr Gwynn.<\/p>\n

The royal family officially changed their name from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917.<\/p>\n

A larger German population and heritage in South Australia meant the name fritz never got replaced, and is still one of the main terms used in the state.<\/p>\n

In Western Australia the meat is called polony, which Mr Gwynn said has been in use there since the 1870s.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A display of deli meats including polony, the name most commonly used in Western Australia. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)<\/p>\n

“That’s actually a British word in origin going back to the mid-17th century and it’s probably an alteration of Bologna.”<\/p>\n

Tasmania appears to be the last bastion of the name Belgium, which Mr Gwynn said was once also used commonly in Queensland.<\/p>\n

Those name differences are reflected at the counter in major retailers like Woolworths, where the meat is sold under six different names across Australia.<\/p>\n

‘Regionalisms’ hard to pin down<\/p>\n

Luncheon meat is not the only classic Australian food item that goes by a variety of names.<\/p>\n

Another commonly found at the deli is the Frankfurt, also known as the cheerio, little boy, saveloy or footy frank.<\/p>\n

Mr Gwynn said they are mostly known as cheerios in Queensland due to the name they were sold under.<\/p>\n

“The early evidence we have for that was it was sold in Queensland as the Cheerio Frankfurts by the Hutton’s brand.”<\/p>\n

The name “little boys”, which is more commonly used in South Australia and parts of NSW and Victoria, appears to have originated in the late 1970s or early 1980s, he said.<\/p>\n

\"Generic<\/p>\n

Small, red-cased sausages go by a variety of names around Australia.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“It’s possible \u2014 apart from the size and the jokey nature of it \u2014 that it might be some sort of rhyming slang with saveloy.”<\/p>\n

Then there are the distinctions in naming that are a bit more divisive, like what the proper name is for a thin slice of potato that has been battered and fried.<\/p>\n

Potato scallop is more commonly used in NSW and Western Australia while potato cake is more dominant in Victoria and Tasmania, Mr Gwynn said.<\/p>\n

Mr Gwynn said the term scallop “probably comes from the word escalope, that refers to a slice of meat, coated and fried”.<\/p>\n

In South Australia they are traditionally called potato fritters.<\/p>\n

Another naming difference that can generate heated arguments is the shortening for that pub staple, the parmigiana.<\/p>\n

Mr Gwynn said generally parma is used in Victoria while parmi is predominant in NSW and much of the rest of the country, although measuring that with any accuracy is a problem.<\/p>\n

He said Australia’s “regionalisms” have always been hard to pin down due to the historically mobile nature of the population.<\/p>\n

“That’s why our accent’s fairly uniform as well. It’s usually more to do with particular very common items that people use, you might notice a difference in terminology,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do you call that most basic of luncheon meats at the deli? You might have had it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,29624,35544,35539,35536,35543,35545,35537,35547,35541,35540,35538,35546,35548,35542],"class_list":["post-48774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-belgium","tag-deli","tag-deli-meat","tag-devon","tag-food-names","tag-frankfurt","tag-fritz","tag-little-boys","tag-parma","tag-parmi","tag-polony","tag-saveloy","tag-strasburg","tag-windsor-sausage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}