This caused me some confusion when I lived in NZ, where the things you wipe your mouth on at the dinner table are called “serviettes.” When I asked for a napkin in a reastaurant, I would sometimes get blank looks, since the waiter didn’t understand why I would want a diaper at the dinner table.
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I’m not sure about the situation in NZ, but these days in Australia there is a bit of a class thing that has evolved around the word “serviette”, and most people try to avoid it when eating out, in favour if “napkin”.
“Serviette” is sort of very 1950s Country Women’s Association tea and cake.
[QUOTE=dangermom]
I’ve never understood that, actually. Fanny was a girl’s name in England for a long time too, and as far as I can tell there were still girls nicknamed Fanny when people were using it as a crude euphemism. Surely the name should have fallen out of use as soon as that happened?
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Well, it did. I had an aunt called Fanny, born in 1901. By the time I knew her she was Frances, and apparently had been so since the 1940’s at least.
[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog]
I’m not sure about the situation in NZ, but these days in Australia there is a bit of a class thing that has evolved around the word “serviette”, and most people try to avoid it when eating out, in favour if “napkin”.
“Serviette” is sort of very 1950s Country Women’s Association tea and cake.
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Interesting. Here in Southern Ontario, ‘serviette’ is the usual expression.
And only a couple of years ago, we had an intern at my work who was named Fanny. She was French. (That lilting French accent! :: le swoon :: Pity she smoked.)
The first ten years of my life I lived in England. I went to a English school for two years. During that time I learned to read and the end of a sentence is called a “full stop”. Also during this time, my mother was telling my older sister about menstrual periods, which of course (hee) sister shared with me the info. Our family moved on an US base and I went the the American school. Imagine my dismay when the teacher asked me what came at the end of a sentence. I said a full stop, she said a period. I was somewhat confused.
[QUOTE=dangermom]
I’ve never understood that, actually. Fanny was a girl’s name in England for a long time too, and as far as I can tell there were still girls nicknamed Fanny when people were using it as a crude euphemism. Surely the name should have fallen out of use as soon as that happened?
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Well, no – I don’t think language works like that, and eenems’ post is a good illustration.
In the UK, where the punctuation mark is called a “full stop”, the most common use of the word “period” is in reference to menstruation. It has that meaning in the US too (I think), but there the word also means the punctuation mark, so menstruation is not necessarily the first association that comes to an American’s mind when they hear the word “period”.
At the time you’re talking about, Fanny was still a common and popular name, so for most people, in most contexts, that was its primary meaning, in the same way that (I assume) you wouldn’t get a fit of the giggles if you saw “tossed salad” on a restaurant menu.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
So as not to leave folks confused, in the US, “fanny” is a very mild term (as in, it’s the sort of thing one’s gramma might say) for the buttocks, male or female. And a “fanny pack” is a sort of pouch with an attached belt, worn over one’s fanny (or occasionally over a hip) and used to carry miscellaneous items.
Meanwhile, on the east side of the Pond, “fanny” refers to the female genetalia, and I gather is considered rather crude (as are most non-clinical terms for genetalia, I suppose).
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So, what do you folk across the pond call what I would call a “fanny pack”?
[QUOTE=GuanoLad]
In NZ, regular cloth napkins are called napkins, but paper napkins are called serviettes.
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When I was there in the early 1980s I dined only infrequently at establishments with cloth napkins. All I know is that my use of the term sometimes provoked joking by my Kiwi friends. My handy Yankee-Kiwi Dictionary (Louis S. Leland Jr, 1980) doesn’t mention the distinction.
[QUOTE=dangermom]
I’ve never understood that, actually. Fanny was a girl’s name in England for a long time too, and as far as I can tell there were still girls nicknamed Fanny when people were using it as a crude euphemism. Surely the name should have fallen out of use as soon as that happened?
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By that reasoning, people would have stopped calling men named Richard “Dick” centuries ago.
By that reasoning, people would have stopped calling men named Richard “Dick” centuries ago.
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Yeah, I know, but Dick has indeed fallen out of use for this very reason, and I would expect it to happen faster for girls’ names, what with societal expectations about girls and all.
[QUOTE=GuanoLad]
In NZ, regular cloth napkins are called napkins, but paper napkins are called serviettes.
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I’m not in NZ, but that’s the way I use those terms too.
[stories I’ve told before]
My grandmother’s name is Jean Fanny (she was born in 1931). She’s always found her middle name mildly embarrassing, but in her 50s she sent away for her birth certificate and found that she was named Fanny Jean. Oh, the mileage I’ve had from that…
She was named after her great grandmother, Fanny Leak. That’s bad, no matter which side of the pond you’re on.