Language can be a funny thing, as words and their meanings change over time.
This has caused some embarrassment for one small village in Austria, which recently announced it’s changing its long-time name from “Fucking” to “Fugging.”
The European village located 215 miles from the capital city of Vienna has decided to take up the new name after years of unwanted derision.
The decision came during a municipal council meeting last month which established that the village will be called “Fugging” starting in January 2021.
“I can confirm that the village is being renamed,” said Andrea Holzner, the mayor of Tarsdorf, the municipality where the village is located. “I really don’t want to say anything more – we’ve had enough media frenzy about this in the past.”
Indeed, the unwanted attention that the village received due to its distinct name is what brought about the change in the first place, according to the Austrian news outlet Die Presse.
The Fuckingers, as the locals were previously called, “have had enough of visitors and their bad jokes” the paper noted.
Tourists have been posing at the village sign since it became famous.
But how did this sleepy village of 100 residents get its awkward name?
The existence of the village was documented for the first time in 1070, and historical records show that some twenty years later, the lord was recorded in Latin as Adalpertus de Fucingin.
The spelling of the name has evolved over the years; it is first recorded in historical sources with the spelling as Vucchingen in 1070, Fukching in 1303, Fugkhing in 1532, and in the modern spelling Fucking in the 18th century.
The village had successfully stayed under the radar until 2011 when Austrian novelist Kurt Palm published his book Bad Fucking which used the relatively unknown town as a backdrop.
The novel was subsequently turned into a feature film of the same name two years later, bringing a wave of unwanted attention to the village.
In addition, the village’s name also inspired a pale lager called “Fucking Hell” — a clever pun since “hell” in German means “pale.”
The advent of social media didn’t help the villagers escape the torrent of unwanted attention either.
With increasing travel, the village received a growing number of tourists, including many English-speakers who found the town’s name hilariously inappropriate.
The village became so famous that there have been instances of people stealing their town sign.
The council later reinforced the sign using anti-theft concrete.