and you thought F***ing was limited to foul language

[benny05]

Brits steal carloads of F**king Austrian roadsigns
By Lester Haines
Published Monday 15th August 2005 13:06 GMT

An Austrian village called Fucking will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns.

Mayor Siegfried Hauppl has asked visitors to lay off the signs which began to attract outside attention after British and US soldiers passing through in 1945 illuminated the locals as to the English meaning of Fucking, Ananova reports.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/15/austrian_signs/



:yoiks:

[Reverend_Smitty]

1. this paragraph is comic gold whether they indended it to be or not

"We reckon that Fucking has been around a lot longer than 800 years, otherwise there wouldn't have been any Fucks to lend their name to the village in the first place, would there?" :rofl:

[moof]

2. Residents decide in 2004 to keep fucking.

At the end of this article

http://creekin.net/c14-n11-fucking-austria.html


The most frequently stolen traffic sign in Austria, at the entrance to the village of Fucking. The lower sign ("Please, not so fast!") is addressed to speeding drivers.

Fucking (IPA: <ˈfʊkɪŋ>, SAMPA: <"fUkIN>) is a small settlement (population c. 150) in the Innviertel region of southwestern Upper Austria, located at 48° 02′ 60″ N 12° 50′ 60″ E, bordering Bavaria. It is near the city of Salzburg. The village is known to have existed as "Fucking" since at least 1070 and is named after a man from the 6th century called Focko. "Ing" is an old Germanic suffix meaning "people"; thus Fucking, in this case, means "place of Focko's people". The German word for "fucking", regarded equally as low as the English word, is ficken.

The name, spelled identically to the gerund form of the English profanity "fuck", is often found amusing by Anglophones.

The settlement's only significant feature is a traffic sign with its name on it at which English-speaking tourists invariably stop to have their photograph taken. The sign is the most stolen street sign in Austria. A considerable portion of Fucking's budget is spent on replacing the stolen signs.

In 2004, the residents voted on changing the name (owing to the stolen signs and embarrassment over the name), but decided against doing so.