The name derives from the German word umklappen (to turn over). Rudolf Peierls, in his autobiography Bird of Passage states he was the originator of this phrase and coined it during his 1929 crystal lattice studies under the tutelage of Wolfgang Pauli. Peierls wrote, "…I used the German term Umklapp (flip-over) and this rather ugly word has remained in use…".
The term Umklapp appears in the 1920 paper of Wilhelm Lenz's seed paper of the Ising model.