Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging | Hacker News Reader

Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

theguardian.com

277 pointsgalonk239 comments

"Don’t people have any sense of humour these days?” asked one OOeN reader.

Another noted: “They’re getting free publicity – they ought to have been happy to have a funny name."

Free publicity that leads to sign posts being stolen. For a tiny village of 100 people, this is likely a serious hardship. If it isn't bringing in more money than it's costing them, it's an attractive nuisance, not free publicity.

I guess if monetized properly big part of those 100 people could live off the name alone. It's also sad to see this tiny cultural artifact go just because few people are inconvenienced. The stone roads and tiny alleys in the old town are inconvenient yet we don't go bulldozing it all down.

How do you think they can monetize it? How do you monetize random strangers coming to your town, taking photos of themselves in sometimes "lascivious poses" with your sign and sometimes stealing it? What's the business angle there?

It's a tiny village. Such places often have a real sense of community that you don't have elsewhere. Injecting a lot of sexual nonsense into their little town because of the name likely feels rather rapey to them.

That's sort of like the old fashioned advice that if a woman is going to be raped and can't avoid it, she should try to enjoy the ride -- which is all kinds of deeply offensive and morally depraved.

These people find this behavior offense, offensive enough that they changed the name. They don't seem to find the name offensive. They seem to only find the behavior of random people coming to their village offensive and they don't know another way to stop it.

Like piracy, the easiest solution is probably to just sell a copy of the sign in a fashion (obviously) easier than theft.

I doubt the thrill of theft is a significant driver of it.

Perhaps that solves the financial part, but it doesn't solve the part where people who speak some other language are sexualizing the name of their town which apparently wasn't named that way to make some kind of sexual statement.

I'm for the decriminalization of sex work, but I also think that needs to be something someone chooses and is not compelled to do. The very definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent, which is why we can distinguish between kink and rape: People can consent to BDSM. The definition of rape does not hinge on the detail of whether or not it is physically aggressive or even violent.

If their primary issue is that it is an affront to their sense of dignity, making money off of it doesn't fix the issue. That's a bit like saying "If you give a few bucks to the woman you raped, it's somehow okay now that she didn't want to have sex with you."

She's highly unlikely to feel like giving her money afterwards somehow makes it okay to assault her.

Rape is a highly traumatic event. Getting offended at a foreigner’s well-meaning amusement that your town name means something funny in their language... doesn’t elicit much sympathy from me at all.

Now getting your signs stolen isn’t very nice at all and becomes less well-meaning, I agree. But I hardly think the joke itself is anything immoral at all.

So if your five year old child has a good view of this sign from their window at home in a tiny village or walks past it regularly on their way home from school and is thereby exposed to random strangers from across the globe pretending to have sex while taking photos, you are supposed to care more that random people on the internet feel you have no right to be incensed and change the name than about the negative impacts to the people of the village where you live?

I cannot fathom why so many people are objecting to their right to change the name of their village. They don't like what's happening. They don't need the world's permission to say "I can't stop assholes from around the globe from being assholes, but I can change the damn name that is their excuse for acting like butts to my town." and now people think it's the townspeople who are in the wrong and not the random assholes from across the globe whose bad behavior they got fed up with.

Wow.

I think I need to get off of HN for a bit. This is just ridiculous.

The post was a suggestion to sell signs, not an approval of the portion of people taking photos that are in highly inappropriate poses.

So yes, this argument is ridiculous.

I noted that it sounded like an attractive nuisance. I failed to list all the ways in which it was an attractive nuisance and only focused on the part where it's obviously costing a small town money.

Then HN pedantry and argumentation kicked in.

The townspeople clearly see it as an attractive nuisance and not as free publicity. They chose to change the name because it's such a nuisance. Now a bunch of people on HN feel the townspeople were wrong to handle it that way and have a zillion criticisms and solutions.

The townspeople didn't ask HNs permission or opinion. And a lot of the comments here before I noted that it's an attractive nuisance were basically junior high style humor listing all the towns with "bad word" names and giggling about it -- which I initially participated in and then deleted those comments to try to behave in accordance with HN rules and treat the article in a more serious fashion, at which point I made my comment about it being an attractive nuisance.

And that's apparently where I made my wrong turn for the day. And there is no cure for where that took me, it seems.

Not everyone that's disappointed in the name change is arguing that the townspeople were "wrong to handle it that way" and need anyone's "permission".

I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape. Few things are actually comparable to rape in severity

I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape.

You are no doubt correct, which is aggravating to me for a long list of reasons.

From the article:

Increasing numbers of English-speaking tourists have made a point of stopping in to snap pictures of themselves by the signpost at the entrance to the village, sometimes striking lascivious poses for social media.

The word is not a sexual word in German. It is in English. This is being forced on the village without their consent and it is leading to sexualized behavior without their consent.

When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape. When a bunch of tourists do that to a town, we point and laugh and act like the town is overreacting and doesn't have a sense of humor.

Over the years, I have tried to think of another example of something where we make this distinction that if we agree to it, it's a good thing and if we don't then it's a bad thing. Rape vs "making love" is the only one I know where we make that distinction and the legal distinction hinges on the detail of consent.

There was a case where a man and woman were getting divorced and she accused him of rape and there was film of the incident because violent sex was her kink. He was found innocent. Violent sex with consent is kink or BDSM, not rape. Rape is about lack of consent, not about the degree of violence.

Rape is not always as clear cut as people would like to imagine. It's really common for women to feel confused about whether or not what happened to them was really rape, in part because people imagine that rape is some kind of violent assault and not simply the detail of lack of clear consent.

The legal definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent and this town is having a sexualized thing forced upon them without their consent. It's unfortunate that people feel I am somehow "escalating" this to a much more terrible thing than it is rather than seeing my remarks as clarifying part of why this is so extremely objectionable to the townspeople.

> When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape.

The equivalent of these no-contact actions gets called sexual harassment, not rape.

What's the "equivalent" of repeatedly ripping their sign out of the ground and stealing it?

These people feel violated. I've seen people on HN used the word rape to describe how they feel about something done to them against their will by, say, Facebook.

It gets used metaphorically that way routinely because we don't really have another good word for "I feel egregiously violated because of something someone did to me without my consent or against my will." We use it that way without it involving physical contact.

> What's the "equivalent" of repeatedly ripping their sign out of the ground and stealing it?

I thought you were talking about the sexual acts.

Stealing the sign is just theft. The equivalent is also theft.

> I've seen people on HN used the word rape to describe how they feel about something done to them against their will by, say, Facebook.

Yes, but they will readily admit that it is hyperbole, not what they actually think about the act. If they treat it as a serious comparison, that will get strongly argued against.

You are saying that the actual definition of rape is fitting here, which is in a different ballpark from hyperbole.

I'm not living there but I would guess that profiteering off the name is seen with contempt as it approves of the meaning. At least for older people. Tbh, your suggestion to cash in on that silly phenomena wouldnt make it stop. Not everything that can be profitable needs to be done :-)

Not my suggestion.

Well, it'd stop the vandalism and town theft, the originally defined issue: Free publicity that leads to sign posts being stolen. For a tiny village of 100 people, this is likely a serious hardship.

But more notably, it's a way of moving the problem into a more concretely defined space, ideally out of sight and out of mind (and the money is just a bonus). Such a shop would become like the tourist portion of any large city -- a place locals avoid, and captures most of the visting rabble.

You'll still have your vandals and troublemakers on the street, but hopefully at significantly reduced rates.

Exactly this, the people from Austria and southern Germany don't find that name offensive at all. They've had enough. And now they exert their right to be left alone and not be harassed by a serious number of english speaking idiots. Places ending in -ing hasnt the same grammatical meaning like doing something, that scheme is really common (Mering, Kissing, Manching, Piding, Peiting, and hundreds more). It's the same idiots that beleaguer known instagram photo spots - just a worse kind. And only for some quick silly joke that humiliates the people there. This will hopefully stop the influx of assholes stealing the village's signpost, "insta posing" at the village sign and making prank calls. Also note that normal people live there, probably in a closer knit arrangement than you normally would assume (3 digit inhabitants). I'm rather sure that persons who profit off the infamous name are looked down to (eg. the silly "Fucking Hell" beer brand, "hell" meaning light in that case in german). Dont forget it's normal people living over there, Doctors, Engineers, Farmers - and they want to be treated that way :)

PS: The pronunciation will not change.

Austrian here. I don't think they have much of a problem with the sexual aspect of the name, but while it may be funny initially, the joke really gets old after years and years of prank calls. I guess they just have had enough.

I’m not objecting to them changing their name, they can do whatever they want with their own town. I’m objecting to the idea that it’s somehow immoral for foreigners to find something about your town amusing.

And yeah, maybe don’t be so prudish. Children seeing random strangers shaking their hips isn’t the end of the world. I personally find that ridiculous. But probably a little bit less ridiculous still than your initial comparison of this to rape of all things.

> I think I need to get off of HN for a bit.

Goodbye.

> "How do you think they can monetize it?"

Presumably the same way Hell, Michigan did. Apparently they sell souvenirs and hold events.

Why exactly would anyone buy the officially licensed Hell shirts when there is nothing stopping anyone from printing that town name on anything?

How many people are going to hold an event in Fugging specifically because the name means a sexual act in a different language?

Although one theory of the origin of the name is the German word for light or bright, most people these days don't find the word Hell particularly offensive and it's not sexually explicit. Fuck or Fucking is still considered "extremely offensive" by some people and it's sexual.

But more to the point, if people in Hell, Michigan choose to monetize the name of their town instead of change it, hey, that's their choice and it should in no way dictate what people in Austria choose to do about the problem they currently have with the issues caused by the name of their town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan

I don't know why people in this discussion feel like their solution or suggestion is more correct than what locals decided they wished to do about the problem. It's not like their solution involved sacrificing babies to a dark god.

Why does it matter if something is considered offensive for sexual or religious reasons?

Like, with a brewery?

Unfortunately they were a bit late with that, the beer that uses the village as it's namesake, Fucking Hell, is from a business a few miles over the border in Germany. (they surely won't rebrand though)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

"Merchandizing, where the real money from the movie is made."

  I recently passed through the town of Weed, California and bought a tie-dye hoodie from a gas station with the town name on it. Didn't need the hoodie, but they sold them so I bought one for the novelty. Voilà! Business angle.

Probably they are not interested in this bad humor and selling hoodies. Also not everything in life is counted in dollars, selling a hoodie with a rapey joke? You think they need that.

How about “My sister went to fucking and all I got was this fucking T-shirt” T-shirt’s.

That's not even funny. Maybe "My sister/friend/whomever went to Austria and I all I got was this Fucking t-shirt" would be sort of funny.

But "She went to fucking and all I got was this fucking t-shirt" isn't really a good joke. There's no surprise element. There's no "gotcha." There's no epiphany of "Oh, I get it!"

That was sort of the meta joke! “All I got was this T-shirt” T-shirt’s are not funny in the first place

It's a challenge.

"My Parents really liked Fucking but all they got was this Fucking T-shirt".

Let's make it a bit darker...

"My Brother and Sister really liked Fucking but all they got was Me" T-Shirt.

I can't see that happening. Making bad jokes could make people think the people of Fugging are some kind of Germans. Austrians hate that.

Well, there was a lager called Fucking Hell.

Translation: "Our Town Name's Light Beer"

Hell is the German word for light.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225292

I don't know anything about beer, but I've spent a minute looking this up before, so here's a surprise German lesson:

‘Hell‘ means bright. Sometimes, ‘light‘ is the correct translation (e.g. light blue is ‘hellblau‘ in German). But in this context, it means pale, as in pale lager[0]. Nothing to do with reduced alcohol content or calories. The German translation for that kind of ‘light‘ (as in ‘light beer‘) would be ‘leicht‘ (lightweight) or ‘light‘ (as a loanword from English).

Also, it's not ‘our town name‘; it's ‘their town name‘. Fucking Hell isn't made in Fucking; it's not even from Austria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_lager#Helles

Thank you for that. I knew I was on shaky ground with the translation. I know nothing about beer and my German is rusty and I didn't do a lot of digging before posting.

My main point stands: It doesn't mean "fucking hell" in German.

Kind of like that song "What does the fox say?" The two brothers didn't expect it to be so successful. In fact, they intended it to be a joke on some TV show they were doing or something like that. They were planning ahead of time to be all "We got our big break and this is the garbage we produced!"

I talked to an American who was sure that it was intended to be a play on words. She heard it as "What the fucks?" and she figured that's why it was so popular.

That may well be part of why it took off -- because it's something for English speakers to snicker about -- but I kind of doubt it was originally planned that way. People who speak English as a second language -- or anything as a second language -- routinely say "bad" things without intending it or even realizing it.

So someone may be doing it ("it" being naming the beer something naughty to the English speaking ear) on purpose because it's funny to people who speak English. But this isn't a case of "laughing with you." It's very much a case of "laughing at you" and the people being laughed at aren't enjoying it and they decided to put a stop to it wrt their town name.

And I feel like I'm getting a lot of hostility for being on the side of the villagers who feel mistreated and don't want to put up with it anymore. And it's an icky thing to be feeling right now and to be observing how this went down overall.

> The German translation for that kind of ‘light‘ (as in ‘light beer‘) would be ‘leicht‘

It can be used that way, but it's not the only meaning: Leicht und stark also refer to a beer's gravity[1] instead of its alcohol content per se. A Starkbier in particular is a beer with 16° on the Plato scale[2] (which does go along with more alcohol, so in a way this distinction is splitting hairs).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_(alcoholic_beverage)

[2] http://8degreesplato.com/2017/05/31/so-what-is-degrees-plato...

Helles = Lager

Spoken like a true entrepreneur. But you know, there are people out there, in small villages that have quiet lives that nobody ever hears about and they are perfectly happy. I'm really amazed at all the "We can monetize this" and "It's free publicity" statements here. How about admiring these people for their wish to maintain tranquility in the village the know and love?

Edit: quite - quiet

The second part of my comment was in the same spirit as well - how about we admire this peculiar linguistic artifact, embrace and enjoy it rather than optimize everything like robots. Europe especially is completely bent over preserving old cultural architecture and artifacts - what's wrong with wanting to preserve _new_ architecture and artifacts?

Join now the club where "opportunity" is more valuable than "freedom"! (hey, it might be an evolutionary trait, but I suck at surviving and I'm ok with it)

> In 2012, there were reports that the village of Fucking in Upper Austria attempted to change its name to Fugging through a referendum after receiving large amounts of prank phone calls from English speakers about the village's name.[3] According to these reports, they were unable to do so because Fugging in Lower Austria was already so named;

Prank phone calls are definitely more annoying than some tourists taking a picture at the town sign.

GP didn't say taking pictures, but that the sign was being stolen.

I do not know if this is true in the specific case but I have met idiots who stole street signs, so this seems at least plausible.

I live about 5km away from Fucking. Their signs are _regularly_ stolen, even despite their countermeasures. They even stopped replacing way signs ( | Fucking > ) that were stolen.

While the demographics stealing the sign might not totally overlap with those willing to pay to it, the village should consider opening a souvenir shop.

Why should they do that? Why can’t they just get on with their lives in peace instead?

Almost seems like a privacy hack, living in a place that direction signs cannot point to. Makes me wonder if they were ever close to getting blanked out on Apple maps.

The brewery might lose some business long term, but for now they surely benefit from another lap in the news machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

One ought not to tell people what they ought to want.

Moreover, is it really so difficult to imagine that there are still people that don't like publicity these days?

Yeah, I just cannot comprehend what is going on in this discussion. Is this the same HN that hates Facebook for all of its privacy issues? But the people in some small village somehow forfeited their right to privacy because a few hundred years ago it was named something that now sounds funny to people in a different language?

It's bizarre.

That’s nonsensical. Because the town’s name is mildly meme worthy, these people are forfeiting their right to privacy? Sorry, what? And how is Facebook even remotely related to this discussion?

I think you're mistreading the parent comment. And oddly too, because you do the same thing. You don't mean "these people are forfeiting their right to privacy" literally, do you? it's the opposite. Neither does the parent, it's a question, implied that the answer is "of course not!"

You made that even clearer with "Sorry, what?" but parent comment only make sense if that addendum is assumed.

Thanks for pointing that out, I see where you're coming from, but GP's other comments make it seem like a serious statement to me.

> there are still people that don't like publicity these days

Yes, but they don't post about it online, so no-one hears from them. They might even choose to live in a village with a 3-digit population count.

Probably fair to assume that they weren’t raking in money from the “haha, the road sign has a rude word” tourism.

Sounds like an opportunity to sell road signs to tourists.

I doubt they tried this but I agree that they should have.

They could make millions from fucking tourists

They probably didn't, otherwise they would've not done it. They had hundreds of years of data to base that decision on.

More likely, only 20 years.

Make the t-shirts!

In Czech republic there is a town called "Horní Police". I saw memes with it, but I dont't find it funny because in Czech it actually means just "Upper Shelf". (But I understand what does it mean for english speaking ppl.)

But what I found more fascinating is that there is bus line number 666 going from Debki to Hel in Poland (Debki sounds bit like "depky" which is diminutive for depressions in Czech).

I can confirm the 666 bus - I go to the Hel peninsula often and it always makes me laugh

Finland has a lot of intentionally rude place names, especially in the north. Places like "cunt pond" ("vittulampi"), "cockpile" ("kullirova"), "cuntwhistle bog" ("vitunviheltämänjänkä") etc.

As to why this is, I've heard a number of theories. One is that people used to be less prudish and this kind of talk was much more commonplace back in the day. Also that the culture up north is more conducive to crude language. It's also possible that when these areas were being surveyed, the locals made some of these names up just to mess with the likely southern officials sent to talk to them.

Also I've heard that this is why there are so many lakes named "Holy lake" ("pyhäjärvi") - at some point, enough was enough and the officials just stopped accepting the local names. True or not, who knows.

Similar with "Grope Cunt Lane" in England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane

There are some good place names too, like "Shitterton", "Cockermouth", and "Bell End". Only Shitterton is intentional, though. It does literally mean "town near the place where you have a poo"

My advisor (Finnish) told me almost every one’s last name is some form of “Järvi”; when the Finns were asked to pick a last name, the guidance was to use a profession or a major physical landmark near them. There are 10s of thousands of lakes (järvi)...

They probably let the builders name it. If you have ever worked on a building site you will have found that every noun is preceeded by the word fucking.

Jewsons, a builders merchant in the UK did a brilliant take on this in one of their adverts.

> The village was first officially inhabited in about 1070, but local lore suggests that a sixth-century Bavarian nobleman called Focko actually founded the settlement. A map dating from 1825 used the spelling Fuking.

Weird (to me, an english speaker with no knowledge of modern or 11th century Austrian) that they went with Fugging and not, say, Focking.

As a German speaker, their choice seems quite natural, because it won't alter the modern pronunciation a lot. I'd even guess that the new spelling might represent a typical Austrian pronunciation with a soft "k" sound more accurately.

Is Austrian like Swiss German where "gg" is "k"? If so the pronunciation might have not/barely changed for locals, but is no longer funny for English speakers.

Locals don't speak a phonetically hard 'k' in the middle when refering to that village. If you heard them say the name, you'd not be sure whether to write it with gg or ck in the middle. (NB: I live in a village essentially next to Fucking)

This. I live in southern Germany (swabia) and many village names kind of have a 'standard german' spelling and a local pronunciation. I feel like Fugging might just be a change that reflects a more austrian pronunciation in the spelling.

> Weird (to me, an english speaker with no knowledge of modern or 11th century Austrian) that they went with Fugging and not, say, Focking.

All the time, they would have had people scraping away some paint turning the "o" into a "u"...

There's actually another village called Fugging in Lower Austria, i assume the name was chosen to keep it phonetically close to Fucking but within the linguistic boundaries of "common" village names.

Also, a "Fock" is a pig in Austrian and Bavarian dialects, so "Focking" would be indicative of "pigs place" or "where the pigs are from", which hardly sounds like a desirable name for ones village.

Pigs as dirty is an outdated, mostly religious based, meme.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-joy-of-pigs-smart-clean-...

Ok but the town wasn't named after pigs so why change it now?

Regardless, there are many idiomatic phrases that treat pigs as undesirable, e.g., "you filthy pig", "I'm sweating like a pig", "you've made a right pig's ear of that" etc.

While your campaign to restore the dignity of the pig is admirable, I'm not sure it's going to catch on

I try. Maybe I might make one person think differently. Thanks for noticing.

Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal.

Only if a human puts it there.

Swindon ("Pig Hill", a large town of about 180,000 people in Southwest England) is just one of many places named after pigs- why wouldn't you name your village after its main agricultural product?

My personal favourite is the small Devon village of Toller Porcorum, which has historically also been called "Swines Toller" and "Hog Toller".

Kumamoto in Japan has a similarly bad name in Swahili. If you break the city's name into 2 four-letter words, you get vagina (kuma) and hot (moto) in Swahili. Thankfully, Swahili speakers are not going to harass this city's residents anytime soon.

meanwhile in Turkey, Batman can be found.

Yeah, you know nobody's going to mess with Batman though.

The joker who did would have to be crazy!

Turkey has bad city names even in its own language.

Along the north coast, you will find a town called Çarşamba (Wednesday), which if you continue to drive for a few hours is followed by a town called Perşembe (Thursday).

The name of the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, means Monday as well iirc.

Most probably all these names just indicate market day...

Sounds plausible,

Similar to weekday names in Portuguese.

Also in Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Batman#Places_named_after...

There's a town in Denmark called Middelfart ...

Never thought of what Middelfart means in english. Now i cannot unsee it.

Somalia too had Dhuusamareeb, which in Somalia directly means 'can't stop farting'. I understand the president recently issued a directive of a name change for the city.

In Norway, we've got a place called Hell; you pass through it on the way from the town of Trondheim to its airport.

A friend of mine was born in a place called Time on the southwest coast, and quips after just about every flight that he was born in Time and had to go through Hell to get wherever he's at.

Oh, and as a special treat for the Germans reading this - a former colleague's last name was Ficken. He did not enjoy checking into hotels in Germany.

There was also the case of a guy with the last name Hell (which means "bright" in German). He wanted to be part of a church in the US and they denied him

At least the Finns are routinely turning this to their advantage. When there is an international (tech) conference in Helsinki, those flying in to the capital may be greeted with a sponsored banner:

Welcome to HEL

The sign at Hell train station says "Hell Gods-expedition" (which is a slightly old Norwegian spelling meaning something like "Hell - Goods reception").

Hell is also the word for a blonde beer and there is a beer named like this after the town:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

I feel like the worst has to be Bastardstown, Ireland.

The main spoken language in Ireland is English and the construction of the name strongly implies it was not an etymological accident.

In a fierce competition with Scunthorpe.

I met an indie techno producer who called himself Kura-C which means "penis" in Serbian. He enjoyed learning this fact.

Pula in Croatia, for similar reason famous between Romanians :) (meaning "dick"). Also, Brest in France.

"They finally grew weary of Fucking, its current name, which some experts say dates back to the 11th century."

"Some have reportedly even stolen the signposts, leading the local authorities to use theft-resistant concrete when putting up replacements."

It's sad and a disgrace that a town has to rename itself after a thousand years, because people whose intellectual capacity is questionable won't stop with the abuse.

EDIT: I'm sure David Mitchell was right when he said that the world is calibrated for "idiots".

This signpost stealing seems to be a common thing. I know of a town in France called Condom which also suffered this fate a lot.

Maybe Batman, Turkey could help out?

We will never ever rename Batman!

Also pornhub gave every resident of Fucking a free lifetime premium account. Wonder if they'll revoke it now.

A lot of people don't know this, but it takes about 30min to go from Petting to Fucking. See https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Fucking,+Austria/83367+Petti...

You need to reverse the directions there.

Apparently some people downvoted you without clicking the link to see that the route is indeed backwards.

I think it’s more that it’s a fairly useless correction which makes no real difference.

You are wrong my dear, it makes all the difference.

Well, Fucking to Petting and back to Fucking is usually about an hour for me.

> I think it’s more that it’s a fairly useless correction which makes no real difference.

You can't assume all roads are two-way/full duplex. It is possible (not sure how frequent) that going from A to B takes considerably longer than going from B to A.

Something that's often not taken into account on Google Maps, but important particularly for cyclists and heavy vehicles, is incline, which can be very different depending on which way you're going.

depending on time of the day, and the location of jobs etc, it may make a lot of difference.

When the road is closed for repairs, people are upset. "No Fugging way."

Haha. That's awesome. My nephew thought it was hilarious when he found Fucking on the map. We spent a quite a while joking about taking a Fucking vacation to Fucking Austria to see if they have a Fucking Starbucks where we could hang out with the Fucking people. But once my sister got annoyed I had to tell him to stop joking about the Fucking place and then we started all over. Lmfao.

I guess that's all in the Fucking past now :-(

You can do the Wank, Kissing, Petting, Fucking, Wedding tour:

https://youtu.be/BLXe2WTYngQ

You and your fucking jokes.

Top Gear's fans do know this.

I liked "Austria" better. Oh, there is a comma, never mind.

Should have gone with Hugging for wholesome tourism.

They are austrians, not english.

English are more likely to hug than Austrians?

No, Austrians don't speak English natively.

So the villagers of "Fucking" got together to pitch ideas for a new village name that couldn't be made fun of, and they settled on... "Fugging"?

It's probably the village's name in the local dialect.

There is also another town called fugging on another part of austria, that used to be spelled fucking but changed name more than a century ago. Language drift seems a reasonable guess.

Perhaps it's just not a uncommon kind of name in that part of Europe? For example, there's the historically significant and wealthy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger_family which contains such august names as "Prince Hubertus Fugger von Babenhausen".

https://www.vaguelyrudeplacesmap.com/ has a whole collection.

To add confusion Austria will then have two places "Fugging, formerly known as Fucking".

Haha what a surprise, my hometown, Wankum in Germany, is actually on this map

Does that mean their beer, "Fucking Hell" [0] will have to rebrand?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

Fugging Heck

That just reads like they wanted the name and came up with a story to fit. The village and the brewery aren’t even in the same country...

Well, that's unfortunate that they decided to change the name. But there's always Intercourse, PA if you're looking for a fun sounding place to go: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Intercourse,+PA/@40.036806...

Keep in mind you can also visit “Blue Balls” and “Paradise” PA which are both close by.

Blue BaLL

And Dildo, in Newfoundland

https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCe2U3ZcK5bTbaDa7

As a Canadian (and Atlantic Canadian) I often see people mention Dildo. But I get an even bigger kick that's Dildo across the harbour from Spread Eagle.

Bird-in-hand gets you pretty close to Paradise, but not as nice as Intercourse.

A lot of town names in that area are like this for some probably not-perverse reason.

When I was about 8 in southwestern PA, we took a trip to central PA to visit Gettysburg, the Amish Country, Hershey, and all that. We took a steam train ride that promised a "trip to paradise".

I remember two things clearly about that train:

1. If you are sitting close enough to the front and lean out far enough, you get hot steam mist droplets painfully scalding your skin.

2. The train indeed went to Paradise, PA, with a big welcome sign, and I remember thinking "Is this a joke? I guess some people aren't very good at humor." I really don't know what I did expect or what would have impressed me more.

Sounds like Strasburg railroad.

Yes! That was it.

Yes I grew up around there. Intercourse is close to Paradise.

Some discussion here:

https://www.discoverlancaster.com/blog/wacky-town-names-lanc...

It seems the story I was told about the town of Intercourse at least has some merit.

In Swedish, the word for cross is Kors. I know it's not a Swedish town name, but a lot of Swedish words are the same or similar throughout other Germanic languages. In this case, it is namely Dutch, which has a direct connection to the area due to the Amish people there.

Anyway, I was told that the town name literally referenced two inter-crossing roads, and Kors was, instead of being anglicized to Cross, became Course.

> In this case, it is namely Dutch,

German (specifically derived from the Palatine German dialect), not Dutch (the Germanic language of the Netherlands.)

That gets somewhat confusing, since we tend to call it Pennsylvania Dutch, and the area as "Pennsylvania Dutch Country."

So it surprises me to discover that the language is connected to Germanic Switzerland.

As much as Kors was seemingly mistranslated to course instead of cross, Deitsch was apparently mistranslated into the word Dutch instead of German.

And people make fun of the Scandinavian quirks in Minnesota. Uff da!

Thanks for the correction. This error-prone history would make for a great YouTube documentary.

Climax, CO.

And Shitterton in Dorset: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shitterton,+Bere+Regis,+Wa...

There's a whole map of Vaguely Rude Place Names!

https://www.vaguelyrudeplacesmap.com/

Don't forget Boring (Oregon), sister city of Dull (Scotland).

NJ Turnpike has an exit at Bordentown, first time I saw them many many years ago, I mistook it as "Boredom Town".

Dull seems quite proud of their relationship with Boring - they have a sign on the nearest main road proclaiming the relationship which always causes me to smile when I drive past.

Released balloons at Easter from church in central Virginia as a kid. Had Easter egg clamped to the string containing a card with return request and address. Got a response a couple weeks later from someone near Intercourse, PA. Of course I found that hilarious but was also amazed at just how far my balloons flew.

Humptulips, WA

For those who love animals there's always the Royal Dick in Edinburgh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_(Dick)_School_of_Veterin...

Y’all are going to Hell, MI

Idle, Bradford, UK

Kill, Ireland

Time, IL, USA

They need to twin with Nobby's Beach.

Muff, Donegal, Ireland

The famous spot for Muff Diving?

https://www.muffdivingclub.ie/

See also “Grape Lane”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane

And if you need to relax, there's also the Bong Recreation Area in Wisconsin

Also Kissing, Germany. I live next to it :P

There is also Kissimmee in Florida :)

Also: Dildo in Canada.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildo,_Newfoundland_and_Labr... (There is also South Dildo..just below Dildo)

Condom in France: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom,_Gers

Intercourse in PA, USA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercourse,_Pennsylvania

Hooker, OK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooker,_Oklahoma

ETA: what do you know..there is more https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-24/wait-youre-where-11-t...

I'm from Georgia and have been to that area. Locals don't pronounce it like "kissy me." They pronounce it like "kih simmy." The Sims is not a suggestive phrase and Kissimmee is pronounced more like that than like Kiss Me.

I checked a few videos claiming to cover the pronunciation and the first two said it more like "kissy me." But this one has the pronunciation I'm familiar with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-Kq-2irQE

Edit:

The name Kissimmee can be traced back to the language of the Jororo people and means “long water.” There were approximately 350,000 people living in Florida when the Spanish arrived in 1513.

https://osceolahistory.org/history-of-kissimmee/

Sexbierum, Netherlands: https://goo.gl/maps/d2pWL7UhDfdJiNbAA

So, how long will it take for some internet subgroup to use the verb “to fug”? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fug:

*Sound shift from fuck.

Interjection fug

Euphemistic form of fuck. quotations ▲

- 1985, Herbert A. Applebaum, Blue Chips, Brunswick Pub. Co., page 126:

  It's always somethin' or other. Ah, fug it. I'm away now.

- 2012, Drew Campbell, Dead Letter House, →ISBN:

  Oh fug. Whad a mess.

- 2015, Lynn Lindquist, Secret of the Sevens, →ISBN:

  “Why is this door locked?” she shouts. “Oh fug!”

People use it all the time along with the Spurdo meme and ":D"

It's already pretty popular in what I'd call loosely 4chan-adjacent meme culture.

https://www.google.com/search?q=spurdo+fug

:DD

Big G tracks you–we are different

There's more to this: Apparently there's another village in Lower Austria (east of this one which is in Upper Austria) which also used to be called Fucking but was renamed to Fugging a long time ago. Then Fucking, Upper Austria attempted to change its name to Fugging but failed because of the name clash with Fugging, Lower Austria. Incidentally they have their name from the same source as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging_(Lower_Austria)

I totally understand the Fuckers for doing this.

Tourism? Nah. They'll just take a picture, buy a soda and leave. People want to live their quiet lives. Change the name and be done.

>>Just across the border in Bavaria in Germany there is a village called Petting.

I guess they kept going from petting to f* and the other way around for centuries.

It's also possible to start at Kissing (200km away)

200km is way too long between events :)

Theyre called Fuckingers

Why do people believe there are bad words?

For the same reason people believe there are words in the first place - social convention.

There are vibrations of the air, sometimes people respond to those.

Well, "bad words" may be vulgarities, profanities, or obscenities. As a layman I would say it's not the word itself but the concept which crosses some moral boundary.

That is the question after all. Why the activity/concept described by the word is considered crossing moral boundary. Moral boundary of who?

Q: Why do people believe there are bad words?

Advocacy mode = 1

This topic is close to my heart. I've done a significant amount of community work in my past, and inoculating members of it against offense, promoting mutual understanding works wonders, and there are greater implications on our speech and how it may come to be regulated should more of us continue to fail to get along well enough to make it all productive.

Just want to share some hard won insights here, that's all and I am taking you seriously for a moment to highlight something important about "bad" words that your question leads to and that may be of value to others.

In the US, the First Amendment is being questioned. There are lots of reasons for this, and they aren't all appropriate here. But, it's being questioned.

The right to not be offended is coming up a lot too. Some of this is cultural imports / clashes as the globe continues to communicate across basically one Internet ...from other parts of the world where speech is considerably more regulated. And some of it boils down to people lacking the tools needed to handle a dialog properly.

These two things aren't an inclusive treatment on this topic, they just stick right out.

You are quite right. Words are just words. People are just people too, so let's explore that just a bit:

Fact is, we are as offended as we think we are. Offensive, or bad, or profane words, are generally offensive in some fashion or other. Norms largely dictate which words fall into these buckets.

Sometimes law differentiates words too.

From Lessig:

Human behavior is regulated by 4 basic forces, and they are physics, money, law, norms.

Physics and money actually prevent actions. If the universe doesn't allow something, it's not gonna happen, or at least won't happen until our understanding of the rules improves enough to engineer it to happen. Fair enough, right? Money presents a cost barrier in a similar fashion. No money, no act, given a sufficient cost to inhibit said act. Similar work arounds, such as using other people's money are in play that parallel our understanding.

The point being physics and money (or markets) actually inhibit actions.

Law is a post fact force. Law doesn't actually prevent anything as much as it can bring a remedy, or civil cost to having done a thing, and having been caught doing it.

Norms work like laws do, minus the courtroom in the vast majority of cases, however one may still experience significant personal costs when violating norms and having been called out, caught doing it.

Back to being offended.

It's all very subjective. A combination of words spoken to one person may be seen as ordinary, benign, laughable, and so forth, but not necessarily offensive, and for sure not criminal. Another person receives those words, and it's definitely offensive, and may be criminal in both the law and norm sense.

(I'm using criminal as a parallel to violating a norm in a particular egregious manner such that there may be a public debate about having done it, and a sort of conviction related to the outcome of that debate, and it's for simplicity, not actually implying norms are in any way criminalized, nor should be, though in some parts of the world they are anyway, but I very seriously digress.)

Given this subjectivity, it's both very hard to understand what might offend someone, and equally hard to understand whether someone is gaming the idea of being offended to gain advantage, position or leverage, or even standing somehow!

Before I continue, there is weighting too.

Truth is, some stranger we don't know, who may or may not know something about us, just doesn't garner much in the way of weight or credence. Context plays a big role here too, but I'm going to keep it simple. (sort of, this topic is hard)

Boiled down, what can we do when someone online calls us an ass, or speaks of the profane, or vulgar?

Go the other way, and say someone we know well, we value, that knows us does that? Ouch! And maybe that needs to hurt a little. The weight is more significant. Worth consideration, but still not worth righteous indignation any more than the other extreme is.

Weigh that speech, first and foremost!

And realize we all have options too:

The most common is righteous indignation. It is by far the number one response, and in my view, a very significant contributor to the idea of free speech being of increasingly dubious value. It's also completely unnecessary!

If we don't want conversations to go bad, then it's on us to manage our end of the conversation, use the options we have, weigh speech we encounter, and communicate clearly enough for others to understand us better.

Where people don't do that, or expect someone else to do that for them, lots of problems crop up, and it's this dynamic that also puts speech under threat.

Other options include:

Humor --when a rando calls you an ass, laugh! That's about all it's worth. Other examples should follow easily.

Redirect --Back the conversation up, communicate, attempt to get past the matter with better, ideally mutual understanding.

End the dialog. Maybe it's just not worth continuing given someone is gaming being offended, or perhaps just has too many triggers for it to make meaningful conversation difficult, low value.

Seek clarity. Intent, particularly via text, is extremely difficult to discern. It's often not possible to do it with sufficient fidelity to warrant being offended. So don't be. Getting clear on something is powerful, and it's often going to result in a greater bond between participants too. Mutual understanding is a powerful basis for trust and trust is a powerful vaccine against offense and conversations going badly that just don't have to go badly.

Sidebar: On the topic of intent, a while back some people ran an experiment on Slashdot. The idea was simple, and it was for people to write out what various exchanges in a discussion thread meant to them. In other words, their "take" on the whole thing.

These varied considerably from what people thought the real intent was! I participated in this and was stunned to learn most intent is implied, unless very directly stated in fairly formal terms. On your next few threads, consider this idea. Or better, review one as a non-participant. You will see errors in parsing intent run rampant, and may also understand more about why the burden to keep conversations good is a shared one, and why seeking to control others is often futile too.

Just know the intent you perceive is extremely likely to not be what the writer intended, and their context being very different from yours. Culture, norms, station in life, etc...

End Sidebar.

There really aren't "bad" words. Just differences. And there is a shared burden here, not some inherent right to not be offended. We have no way to handle that in a meaningful way without also watering down speech to the point where we will begin to also fail to understand one another and even accurately represent who we are individually. (which drives more failure to understand, and that's a very bad cycle)

Burden is on all of us here, both as speakers and as listeners. And there are options available to us and we should be using them long before we arrive at righteous indignation. If we do use them?

"bad" words become an academic discussion, not a painful, or expensive one.

Advocacy mode = 0

Why are there irrational numbers? Why so many, why so different? Are rationals not enough?

> Why are there irrational numbers?

Because, a line doesn’t have any holes and a fraction just gives you a point, such that no matter how close you are to another number there will always be gap.

Well, there is a gap in your answer, you speak about line, holes and points (domain of geometry, very well), but then you introduce numbers somehow. Also, I'd be more interested in relation between people, swearing and irrational numbers, not between irrational numbers and geometry. Unless you'll provide a mapping between geometry and people, that relates to irrational numbers.

It's less about being a "bad word" per se.

The issue is that regularly people steal the town signs or that people come, take pictures of them fucking (sometimes literally sometimes just in gesture) in front of the sign and leave, thus annoy the citizens.

Do you think this village's problem would be significantly different if they were named "Coitus" instead?

I suppose the silver lining is that swearing retains its potency as long as people find it offensive. In a sociopolitical sense, the n-word (evidence in itself right there) is the only one with any real weight attached to it any more.

As a Brit who swears constantly, uses a lot of slang, and enjoys drowning every sentence with relatively acerbic sarcasm I'm curious how I'd fit in polite American society.

I wonder if they will keep making this glorious beer:

https://www.bierlinie-shop.de/a-640

They clearly also had some fun with the name

Spurdo’s influence is universal

I knew I couldn't be the only one who thought the new name was much funnier than the old one!

I would have gone with Fraking

I do believe you need the second `k`, ie “Frakking”.

Maybe it's a weird sex thing involving Jonathan Frakes.

It’s a sci-fi thing to get around censors. Famously used in BSG

That would explain how to create the next generation.

So say we all

So say we all.

given a neighboring village is named "Franking" that sounds like a bad idea :)

Great, now its going to fuel Spurdo memes instead.

A town near me is called "Licking". I've long thought that the only worse name would be "Sucking".

https://imgur.com/RiLpGY7

Boooyi, that was my imgur submission back in 2014 :)

Don’t forget these guys, I’ve been to both -

https://goo.gl/maps/tyDE578TkHtShaPp6

https://goo.gl/maps/anpHReZbbHGgNtki6

What a coincidence lol. I just randomly read the wiki page about this city yesterday. And now this. Wow.

I misread the title as "Australia" and I was only slightly surprised and kind of impressed.

Australia has plenty of fun place names too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tittybong,_Victoria

Nothing compares to Burrumbuttock.

Fun story. There are currently 69 comments, im ruining that.

Hopefully Fuckerberg, Austria never changes.

Soon someone will write graffiti under the current signpost:

"Sometime in the past, we were actually Fucking"

Not sure this is an improvement.

The Fuggers were famous - perhaps even infamous - bankers.

Similar story:

"World Taekwondo, called the World Taekwondo Federation until June 2017, is the international federation governing the sport of taekwondo and is a member of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF).[2] The body was renamed in June 2017 to avoid the "negative connotations" of the previously used initials WTF."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Taekwondo

Why do they need both a WTF (World Taekwondo) and a FIT (Internatinal Taekwondo Federation)?

Also in Sweden the university hospital of Karolinska Institute had to drop the domain kus.se and go with karolinska.se as they got too many visitors from other countries. In Danish and other languages kusse means vagina. https://www.svd.se/karolinska-overger-dyrkopt-webbadress (in Swedish) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karolinska_Institute

Well, at least nobody will mix up Austria and Australia anymore.

Imagine how the settlers on Uranus are going to feel.

To paraphrase Tallulah Bankhead, so this is the village that can't spell "fuck".

Too bad Tuli Kupferberg isn't around to see it.

Damn, no more Fucking.

Fugg.

Fugg!

Fugg me. Fugg you. This is fugged. You fugger. WTF.

Yes, it will suffice.

Fugging idiots. It's like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs because she quacks too much.

Is it so hard to comprehend that maybe living in a nice Austrian village can be better without a golden egg-laying goose that is a huge nuisance? Not everyone is an entrepreneur who wants to make sacrifices in the holy name of $$$.

I know, I agree 100% (I was being a bit provocative on purpose :p ).

But, on a serious note, I think this will backfire. It's one thing to not have a knife in you, it's totally another to remove one that is already in because you'd rather it wasn't there in the first place.

They are now officially 'the village formerly known as Fucking'. You can be sure the pranks will continue (possibly even more annoying because now people will be putting on an 'accent' when saying "Fugging").

I don't know what a better solution to this problem would be, but this doesn't mean I can recognise a bad solution when I see it.

So sad.

Let's hope they change it back once they notice the acute loss in revenue from tourism.

ahahaha that's not better!

quick trip to Urbandictionary.com folks

Ah, Urban Dictionary, where you can search for any random word and it will have a sexual definition somewhere.

Use the upvotes and downvotes as a guide

Its worked accurately enough for decades to share a regional context

Not better

I wonder if the residents will continue to get free [0] Pornhub Premium?

[0]: https://www.pornhub.com/premiumplaces

(Note: SFW webpage, but still on the PH domain)

Seems they fugged up there!

This is clearly intentional.

Places do indeed rarely officially change their name by accident.

Considering you cannot educate English speaking idiots, make a living out of them:

Based on social media analysis see when there's a "high season" of idiots

Buy domain fuckingaustria.com or something more clever.

Get 100 tshirts with a town sign illustration, bumper stickers, mugs, wool hats and jumpers (which will be worn across all Europe by EU roaming English speakers on road tours), a roadside market permit, sell them and on the side offer informative pamphlets and mailing list subscriptions about the town and what locals do. Rinse and repeat while pushing what Fucking really is about, always with a deadpan take that leaves wondering wether you're serious or not.

It's what New Zealand's president did with the country not being shown on several maps. Instead of a hissy fit, use humor to point at a problem.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HynsTvRVLiI

They don’t want the hassle of doing this stuff. I guess they just want to be left alone.

> It's what New Zealand's president did

We have a Prime Minister.

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