Release your talons from your pearls my dears. I am talking about the Austrian village called Fucking.
Locals without knowledge of the English language did not know the name of their village was a profane word in English until American occupying forces post WWII discovered the village and started taking photos of each other posing under the town name sign. More recently village name signs were being stolen until made theft proof and CCTV was installed to stop tourists at night time filming themselves doing what you may guess in front of the town signs.
I suspect the tourism dollars that flow into the local area might be reduced but the locals have had enough and are changing the spelling of their village to Fugging, although it will still be pronounced the same, however that is in their Austrian dialect.
Smiling. And love that (however it is pronounced) that fucking goes on...
ReplyDeleteEC, of that we can be sure.
DeleteWe will not be defeated! We will continue the fucking tradition anyway it's spelled.
ReplyDeleteVery good Jayne. I like the traditional Fucking too.
DeleteI learn something new every day. Cheers to the Fucking people.
ReplyDeleteCheryl, I am sure they appreciate your sentiments about Fucking.
DeleteGlad I took my pearls off before sitting down at the computer.
ReplyDeleteAlways wise before reading my blog Cynthia.
DeleteI remember reading about the name change in my newspaper and wondering why they didn't change it sooner.
ReplyDeleteRiver, I am sure some didn't want any change to Fucking. They liked Fucking for just what it was and it was probably a close vote. They try a decade or more ago to change the name, but it failed and Fucking remained just as it had always been.
DeleteThere are 20 languages on earth that are spoken by 100 million people or more. So it is inevitable that most words ever invented will be crude _somewhere_ on earth eg the Swedish town of Fart just means Speed.
ReplyDeleteHels, speaking of that word, one of my family discovered the word Trafalgar pronounced backwards. It amused us kids immensely, almost as much as the word bum.
DeleteOh I'm laughing. Here we have a town called Dildo and the sign keeps getting sprayed with 9" etc. It was made famous more recently by Jimmy Kimmel when they asked him to run for mayor and created a Hollywood type sign on a hill.
ReplyDeleteXO
WWW
WWW, and the world worries about whether historical statues should come down when there are so place names to correct.
DeleteOur nearby town of Condom became very popular with camera toting tourists, and postcard senders.
ReplyDeleteCro, I am sure it is popular. Ernest Wanke Road here causes much mirth.
DeleteI googled "Fucking, Austria" and then clicked on "images". Quite a few pictures of people posing by the sign, but I get the sense that it was accidentally discovered by English-speakers while driving, bicycling, or hiking through Austria (or Europe in general) rather than it being a true tourist destination. I could be wrong, though.
ReplyDeleteI occasionally see "fug" or "fugging" as a synonym for sex in printed material.
Kirk, maybe after the occupation the town name was rediscovered. Interesting about fugging. I haven't noticed it myself.
DeleteWell that's a screamer!
ReplyDeleteNever heard of the town, how interesting and can imagine the English speaking people having great fun there by that sign..lol
Margaret, of course people of our age would not behave in such a juvenile manner...would we?
DeleteDid you know that there's a town in France called Condom? I went there but experienced no real feeling for the place.
ReplyDeleteCro mentioned it, but love your work YP.
DeleteOK, you definitely win the "shocking headline" competition. Hugging a rat PALES in comparison! LOL
ReplyDeleteSteve, I really wondered about the wisdom of my headline, totally forgetting that I speaking to people of my own vintage who have been around the traps.
DeleteThey could have set up a shop and sold the signs
ReplyDeleteTravel, they could have done. I expect it is a very conservative village.
DeleteOk, you had me with the title, reeled me in to read it. I bet the locals are fed up, but yeah, no more tourists can be a bummer too, financially speaking.
ReplyDeleteStrayer, their decision, their loss I suppose.
DeleteLOL, I had never heard of this one Andrew.
ReplyDeleteSami, there must be a few in Portugal with interesting names.
DeleteI'm laughing.. above comments hilarious too 😀😀
ReplyDeleteGrace, comments are often the best.
DeleteThat would be a funny address ! Where are you from ? From Fucking in Australia ! hahaha ! We have a city here which is called long breasts translated into English !
ReplyDeleteGattina, I hate to think what the name of the city is.
DeleteMy now-wife has Cambodian heritage. When it came time to type up the wedding invites, my prospective father-in-law wanted to put my parents' full names in English and Khmer. The problem was that my mother's middle name (which is a very common English name mind you) sounds perilously close to "f*ker" in Khmer. Yeah, there was some very challenging conversion from Latin to Khmer script done there...
ReplyDeleteAh, that Adam. Yes, Cambodian seems to be problematic at times. My former workmate Mr Phi. Cambodian but maybe Chinese, Mr Hung. I don't know if he was or not. Cambodian Chinese Mauritian, Mr Lik-Tung. Not Cambodian but Thai person in media many years ago, Porn Tip. One can only wonder what your mother's middle name was. Best to leave her middle name out?
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