Are -er insults a British phenomenon?

In the UK there are a lot of insulting words which end in -er, like this: scrubber (slut), tosser (masturbator), chancer (untrustworthy person), poofter (homosexual), wanker (masturbator, generally despicable person), nutter (insane), poser (affected/overdressed person). I think it’s a relatively modern British phenomenon because it seems like American English doesn't have all these -er insults. Can anyone give any insight into this?

(p.s. I am creating a plural tag "insults" since plural is winning votes over at meta.english.stackexchange.com; please give your vote on whether tags should be plural or singular.)

Solution 1:

American English doesn't have these -er insults, but don't think it lacks -er insults all together. Wikipedia has a list of pejoratives for people, and on the list I saw these -er examples that I'm familiar with.

• Ambulance chaser (scummy lawyers)
• Bible thumper
• Breeder (against straight people from gay people)
• Carpetbagger
• City slicker
• Cracker
• Holy roller
• Hoosier
• Loser
• Mother fucker
• Pecker

Solution 2:

I think mickeyf has hit the nail on the head here. These insults end in -er because that is how you take a verb and turn it into a noun. Like farm -> farmer, wank -> wanker, fuck -> fucker. Probably the most likely reason you don't see many of the same -er insults is that the perjorative verbage in the UK is different than in the US. Love the list, JoFrhwld!