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Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

theguardian.com

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Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#101

Post by chris_wot »

wraptile wrote: post #52
DoreenMichele wrote: post #44

"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.

Well, there was a lager called Fucking Hell.

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#103

Post by chris_wot »

howlgarnish wrote: post #37
softbuilder wrote: post #25

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.

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#104

Post by selestify »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #75
selestify wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imp…

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.

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#106

Post by nickt »

flowerlad wrote: post #8

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...

See also “Grape Lane”

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

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#107

Post by tehlike »

skavi wrote: post #43
scoot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#108

Post by _underfl0w_ »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #56
wraptile wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

"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.

Re: Fucking, Austria changes name to Fugging

#109

Post by ksaj »

dragonwriter wrote: post #94
ksaj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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