The secret seems to be to acquire a good nickname, like Roger of Chester County, England.
If it is a real name—a nickname, presumably—there seem to me to be two possible explanations for its application to Roger. First, that it applies to an actual event—a clumsy attempt at sexual intercourse by an ‘Inexperienced Copulator’ (my name for Roger), revealed to the world by a revengeful former girlfriend. Fourteenth-century revenge porn perhaps? Or it could be a rather elaborate way of describing someone regarded as a “halfwit”—i.e., that is the way that he would think of performing the sexual act.
Of course, whether you want your name to live through the centuries in that way is an open question.
Combined with the slang use of roger, that’s almost too good to be true. Hmm, there’s also a Rogerus deus salvat feminas—Roger God-save-women.
The story also tells us that there has been a need for good sex ed for a long time.
Sex ed for boys, anyway.
The revengeful girlfriend seems to have known what’s what.
PZ:
Indeed. In this case, I think Roger got a bit lucky, because his name could have been so much worse.
I might start adding that e, I like it. Fucke.
Insignificant — not known by one name — such as Homer, Galileo, or Einstein (all examples with an admittedly European, and positive, bias). Possibly real, so has one-up on the alleged carpenter’s not-alleged son of c.2000 years ago, to name one well known fictional example.
That’s interesting. In John Barth’s novel The Sotweed Factor “roger” is the word consistently used for “fuck.” Maybe he knew something back then that nobody else did.
@ cervantes
Roger is common, if somewhat outmoded, English bawdy slang for energetic copulation. It was certainly common parlance in the 60’s.
Naive question: So, according to this it’s commonly accepted that fuck derives from the german for soldier but that its connotation of sex comes centuries later and this is the first example of it used with sexual connotations. Um, are we 100% certain this legal document is sexual connotations? Okay, the “bythenavele” implies so, but can we really be certain? (This is a sincere but naive question.)
Chester county court is the county court in Chester. “Chester County” isn’t a thing. Well I guess it is but it’s called Cheshire,
Bernard @ 7:
It was in common use long before that. I brought up the slang use in the first post.
Caine @ 10,
So I understand, but the Sot Weed Factor was – I think – published in the 60’s.
I was reiterating the point about slang usage just because my reading of 6 was that cervantes missed your reference. I may have been wrong.
woozy,
The point isn’t that “fuck” was derived from the German word for soldier; it’s that that word was mistakenly recorded as “fuck” in some document. There could be some folk etymology going on, or perhaps some mocking of the soldiers, but it’s not the origin of the English word.
There’s a good discussion of the etymology here (but without the new information).
@ me, 12,
To clarify, the earlier mention was of one John le Fucker; the speculation is that that was just a misspelling of “Folcher”.
Welease Wodger!
Somebody had to say it.
Well, if roger has long been a synonym for fuck, perhaps this is the deep explanation.
Well, okay, but my question still stands. If the first instance of fuck did not mean having sex, on what basis do we conclude that this instance does? Calling someone Roger Fuckbythenavele is weird but how do we have any idea what the document meant to the people of the time?
And the question of how it went from a typo to expletive is still unknown?
I went to Keele University. Fuck.
the bacronym has overtaken all the more historical dervation of the werd. for*unlawful*carnal*knowledge.
One of those instances where “it’s so clever, must be truesies. if not, (irregardless) let it be true regardless.”
uhhh, even so, good enuf.
I’ve come to the conclusion that with the exception of science, commercial marketing, or military terms, if the original story involves acronyms it is always completely false. That goes for tip, posh, news, Oz, fuck or anything else. (Except for scuba, radar, snafu, foobar, etc. *sigh*) But seriously if I hear those stupid tip and posh stories again I’m going to scream. And “news”… *Sheeesh*.
What about Rodger spelled with a D? I mean, Rod, come on.
woozy @19
Foobar is actually fubar, fucked up beyond all repair/recognition.
I know. But I’ve always seen it spelled with double-os. Which amuses me because it’s an acronym that no longer correct spells itself.
It’s military in origin, I presume?
Actually, I’ve only heard engineers use it. Engineers are predisposed to find acronyms clever but I don’t think the general public is predisposed to incorporate them into common language which is why I call bullshit on “tips” = “to insure prompt service” (it’s a plural for cripesake) and “posh” = “port out starboard home” and “news” = “North, East, West, South” (sheesh…)
woozy,
Granted, we can’t be 100% certain that the fuck in Roger’s name refers to copulation, but there does seem to be some pretty good circumstantial evidence. First, we have examples in English from as early as the 15th century of fuck being used in a context where it clearly means copulation. Second, there are cognates in other Germanic languages with a similar meaning (scroll down in the same article). Third, I mean, really, what else could it mean? For me, the real question is how do we know that John le Fuck’s name wasn’t about copulation? (Though I have to say that I knew a Brazilian of German descent with the surname Fuck.)
Regarding acronyms, the link that I provided to the Snopes article in comment 12 has a pretty good rule of thumb: don’t believe in alleged acronyms from before the 20th century.
Oh, I’m certain it is. I’m just a bit curious how historians do research and how they decide that they can legitimately declare a solution. We have one thing 100 years before without sex and another 100 years with sex and a thing now with a weird “by the navel” but otherwise not about sex so how do we assume a gradient? Just curious.
Good point. I bet you are right. Some snickering english clerk…
Ah, good! I’m glad other people came to that conclusion. I mean that just isn’t how people pick up language. And I’m *really* glad to see that stupid “posh” story dismissed. Not sure why that one particularly rankled me but it did.
I once tried to figure out the meaning of a collegues surname called Schwertfeger (lit.: swordbrusher) here in Germany. It was an old term for a blacksmith assistant who cleaned newly forged swords with a metal brush of all the staff that stuck to it after forging. Interestingly, in medieval times, this occupation was called Schwertficker (lit.: swordfucker, I’m sure she’s happy the family didn’t go by that name). The word ‘ficken’ ment a thrusting motion, and in medieval times, the Schwertficker didn’t use a metal brush, but thrust the sword into a pile of sand repeatedly to the same effect. It was apparently quite a common verb at that time, and it was even used in military jargon where it was possible to fuck a castle, meaning taking a battering ram to smash ist gate.
woozy @22
I don’t know the origin of fubar, I suspect it’s military (snafu is).
In nuclear engineering “crud” is a specific technical term. One of the first civilian nuclear reactors was at Chalk River, Ontario. The engineers there noted radioactive scaling building up on internal reactor components and called it crud, short for “Chalk River unidentified deposits.” The Chalk River reactor was permanently shut down in 1993 but crud lives on in nuclear parlance.
Whether foobar is derived from fubar, or the other way around (instances of foo used as a nonsense / placeholder word predate any known instances of fubar), or are not related at all, is unknown. Foo, bar, baz, and foobar, have been in-use in the computer community since the 1960s. I myself have(? had? — I’m not sure where they are now) DEC manual(s?) from the late-60s / early-70s which used foo, at least, as a placeholder.
Hm.
This strikes me as lacking in a certain type of imagination. Why couldn’t his surname refer to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navel_fetishism
I can see him boasting about this fetish, when the more usual way was condemned as fornication, and the second more usual way was condemned as sodomy.
Of course, he may have been a little too careless about who he satisfied this fetish with — “Yes, my daughter is still technically a virgin, but I am the {judge/mayor/wealthy merchant/other important person} around here, and you are going to be outlawed!”