On the subject of this distinguished word, here is an excerpt from Claiborne’s Our Marvelous Native Tongue
“The speech of sailors (or soldiers) is, well, salty: many tavern discussions must have touched on fokkinge . Equally “low” Dutch contributions were crappe and bugger , the latter of which the Dutch had borrowed from the French.”
Ahhh…the wonder of human ingenuity…
Greetings and welcome to the SDMB, babette. I take it you’re referring to Cecil Adam’s article: What’s the origin of the “F” word"?
“Bugger” came from the Middle English bougre, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin Bulgarus (meaning, of course, the Bulgarians).
“Crap”, also according to Merriam-Webster, came from the Middle English crappe, meaning chaff.
In “The Cartoon History of the Universe,” Larry Gonick claimed that the root of the word ‘bugger’ was from ‘bougre,’ the french term for the sect now known as the Cathars. One alleged belief of this group was that the body was a bad thing, and so having children was discouraged if not actively forbidden. However, marriage was allowed, so the type of sex going on was not the kind sanctioned by the RC church. I’ll let your imagination figure out how the connection to buggery was made from there.
Here’s a website that discusses this as well:
That’s the long way home. The term we know today as “bugger” did derive, originally, from the Latin name for the region we now call Bulgaria. But, of course, that’s not to say one is the other. 
BTW: Larry Gonick’s books are cool.