What’s in a name?

Besides making me more aware of the wildlife at Gondwana’s Namib Desert Lodge, this creative sign also made me think about the origin of the F-word. I did some quick searches thanks to Ma Google and was surprised to find that it’s been around for the last few centuries.

Urban myth has it that it was the acronym ‘For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge’, something a policeman might scrawl in his notebook before he booked an offender, but the actual etymology of the word can be traced back to old German. It appeared in a dictionary from 1598 ‘A Worlde of Wordes’ as being remotely derived from the Latin word ‘futuere’ and Old German ‘fi**en’ that meant ‘to strike or hit’ and was used as slang meaning ‘to copulate’.

The earliest use of the word appears in surnames like ‘Fu**ebotere’ in the 13th century and records from 1373 refer to a town near Bristol called ‘Fo**ynggroue’ (rated highly by TripAdvisor for honeymooners). The term was found in a court document from the city of Chester in 1310. It was used in a late 15th century poem called ‘Fleas, flies and friars’ deriding unwholesome acts by the Carmelite monks of the English town of Ely. A century later it was already widely in use.

(References: The F-word is even older than you think – The Washington Post; What’s The Origin Of The F-word? – Dictionary.com; The history of the word f–k | Gymglish)