No more Fucking:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Austria, that is.

A city in Austria named Fucking wants its name changed from Fucking to something else. I might suggest perhaps either Chastity or Puritania.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/world/04/25/12/fucking-village-wants-name-change

I must admit that this is the kind of story that makes me wonder how precisely does a village get a name like fucking in the first place? It seems kind of, well.....wrong.

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

The Bugle (hugely recommended podcast, btw) mentioned that nobody knew it was an English curse word until WWII, when Brits came around and, well, discovered Fucking.

That's right: the Brits only discovered Fucking in WWII.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine the letters those Tommies sent home from there. "Well we got to Fucking and we really enjoyed it."

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

"Really, Mum and Dad, we've got to bring you over here when the war's over. When you see Fucking in Austria, you'll never forget it!"

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Well the germans did give it to them pretty good there for a while.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

We wants MOAR analysis!!11

Oh.... the hell with it!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I should think this name would draw tourists. But perhaps they were not the right kind of tourists.

Drivers heading to the village often see naked couples romping in front of the signs, and local entrepreneurs made the situation worse by flogging off Fucking postcards, Fucking Christmas cards, and recently, Fucking beer.

Um. Someone teach these people how to market this goldmine.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Just sell postal forwarding to adult movie studios. They're sitting on a goldmine.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

It's their Fucking town, they can do whatever they want.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

yes, then there's also the german Fucker bus company

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's just a spelling issue. Spoken language versus written language.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

There should be another Fockers' movie, with a trip to this town in Austria.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Only if Ben Stiller appears as Zoolander in the movie.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Does Fucking mean something else in German or whatever language that region speaks?

[di-glossia.livejournal.com]

It's misleading to say that, though, since a) fuck has a muddled history and may be descended from multiple Germanic words, one of which means strike and one of which means to have sex; and b) Fucking translates closer to "Fuck's settlement". -ing is an Austrian suffix for settlement. Fuck was probably a surname of some sort. There was a John le Fucker in 1278, which general consensus agrees had little to do with the word fuck.

Fucking as a word correlates closer to the current ficken, which means exactly what it sounds like. However, ficken's current popular use probably has a lot to do with English-language media.

[di-glossia.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's not a word, though. Ck isn't a common digraph in Austrian German, either, so it's just a chance happening that someone changed the spelling before any English speakers got there. What it really means is something along the lines of "Fuck's settlement", -ing being an Austrian suffix to describe a settlement (like burg, ville, or sylvania in English).

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

It's the one place where you can talk about the Fucking police, the Fucking taxes, and the Fucking traffic... and not sound like you're complaining.

I'm sure it's surroundings are lovely too, in the greater Fucking metropolitan area I mean, this is Fucking Austria.