Funny Old World - Private Eye Magazine

“Yes, we all know what our town’s name means in English,” Mayor Siegfried Hauppl told reporters in his Austrian village near Salzburg, “but we didn’t give it a second thought until tourists started stealing the road signs. So many signs have been stolen recently that we even had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but eventually decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, and will probably exist for another 800, but only if British tourists stop stealing our Fucking signs.”

“The village probably got its name in the twelfth century, when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area, and the ‘ing’ was added as a word for settlement. We have a butcher called Herr Fuck working here to this day. Residents first found out about the English meaning of the word at the end of World War II, when British and American soldiers were stationed in the area, and at first we didn’t mind the jokes. A lot of tourists come here to pose for photos in front of the signs, and if they spend some money in the area, we’re happy to see them. But we’re fed up with having to replace the signs again and again, because thoughtless people keep ripping them down and taking them home as souvenirs.”

Franz Duernsteiner, an expert on Austrian village names, added that “the residents of Fucking are actually very conservative people. Most of them can speak English, and when someone asks them where they come from, they are often a little ashamed to pronounce the word. Residents of two other Austrian communities, Windpassing and Wank on the Lake, suffer a similar reluctance.” (Cape Argus, 19/8/05. Spotter: Tim Minogue)

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1144/section.fow