While attending a conference, one of the speakers was from a legal firm by the name of Morrison & Foerster LLP.
This is a large international legal firm appearently.
All of their handout, slides, cards, etc brand the firm as “MoFo”. In fact, their webite is www.mofo.com .
They honestly appear to be oblivious to the fact that at least some people would consider that an extremely poor marketing decision.
So, I was wondering if maybe I am in a small minority of poeple that this has a meaning for this term already in my head. I have a hard time believing this is true though. I suspect that at least 50% of the American population under 40 years old would get this alternate connotation.
I can just imagine going into court and being asked who was representing me and saying, “Its this mofo attorney right here…”
of course it means something to me. It was a fond nickname given to me by the ladies who lived in the correction center that I ran back in the day. They assured me it was short for “Most Fond”
I’m 47, well the other side of hip, and I know what a mofo is (so to speak). I know lawyers in their early 50s who know what a mofo is. There’s no excuse for them not knowing what a mofo is – thus, they obviously think this is funny.
Darlings, they’re from San Francisco originally, and they know exactly what they’re doing. I’ve interviewed in their NYC office (many years ago - they didn’t bite, and they were probably dead right in their decision) and have friends who’ve worked there. Anyone who professes ignorance (or offence) is either new or from a firm they’ve acquired, who probably isn’t too happy about the acquisition.
I don’t know about the under 40 part. IIRC, the MoFos were one of the biker gangs that coalesced into the Hell’s Angels in California back in the 1940s. I used to hear quite a bit when I was a teenager in the 1960s.
Along the same lines, there was for many years in my business a successful company named after the two partners, Tony Sanchez and Brian O’Brien. They were more than happy to be known as SOB; in fact they had a big stained glass SOB in their reception area. They’ve split up now and Tony Sanchez is running for Governor of my state.
Hey Mange, you’re British right? Or am I thinking of a user with a similar name? Cuz all y’all got some pretty weird ways of playing with words on that side of the pond, too. Maybe you don’t spell 'em all funny like, but you say things like “wooster” for “Worcester” and “norritch” for “Norwich,” “redding” for “Reading,” which make even less sense, and don’t even get me started on words like “derby.”
Oh sure! (I have just come back from holiday in a little Norfolk [sub](incidentally pronounced ‘Norfuk’)[/sub] town by the name of Wymondham - the pronunciation of this place name? ‘Windam’)
There’s nothing uniquely British about this[sub](‘Connecticut’, ‘Tooele’(Utah))[/sub] although maybe we do have a profusion of them over here; I chalk it up to the language and culture having had more time to get messed about.
By the people that were met from this outfit, one would think they had no idea. It would be somehow more comforting to think it was a joke and they did know what it meant and went with it anyway.
