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And, completely irrelevant but still - a Croatian former colleague blushed like hell when being introduced to another colleague of ours, named Peder. Turned ou
by lb1lf 4y ago
And, completely irrelevant but still - a Croatian former colleague blushed like hell when being introduced to another colleague of ours, named Peder.
Turned out in Croatian, a 'Peder' was someone with an unhealthy interest in kids.
Poor Peder immediately got ruled out as dating material - no way she'd be able to bring a guy back to her parents and introduce him as, well, a pederast.
(My name, too, is somewhat unfortunate in the anglo world - first name being 'Odd'. Oh well. There's a couple of Norwegians having it even worse. One of them is actually named just that. Even Worse. (Not to mention the brother of another former colleague, named Odd Male.)
- grujicd 4y agoPeder means "gay", not pedophile in croatian (or serbian). A bit less problematic, but still not that acceptable in the balkans.
- lb1lf 4y agoAh, thanks for setting me straight. Come to think of it, it is quite possible Mirta never actually said that 'Peder' equalled 'pederast' - just blushed and suggested (after Peder had left the room!) that the name was highly inappropriate because reasons, leaving me to connect the dots.
- hnov 4y agoIn a bunch of Slavic languages pederast colloquially means homosexual, probably a holdover from the past.
- cafeinux 4y agoIn French, an homosexual is colloquially called a "PD" or "pédé". It is offensive to some people and is usually used as an insult by homophobes. It directly comes from "pédéraste" and contributed a lot, 20 years ago, in the idea that homosexuals where deviant people.
- Archelaos 4y agoIn Ancient Greek the word (παιδεραστία) was typically ment in the specific sense of "(male) lover of boys", not "lover of children", although the latter meaning would syntactically been possible. Because in the singular παῖς means "boy" in contrast to κόρη "girl", but for "children" the plural of παῖς is used. So we have an old specific meaning that combines a 1) male 2) adult targeting a 3) male 4) child. This allows for a whole range of possibilities and thus possible disambiguties, if one or several of the four components were relaxed. There are some parallels with the history of the word "homosexuality", because "homo" in Latin can mean both: "male human" or "human in general". The word often excluted female homosexuality, when it was limited to the performance of a particular sexual practice, namly anal penetration.
- selimthegrim 4y agoI’m pretty sure ‘Petar’ is the equivalent name there
- 331c8c71 4y agoExactly the same in Russian.
- senko 4y agoAlso, it is explicitly a pejorative term, as opposed to "gej" (literal transliteration of "gay"), which is a neutral term.
- Lio 4y agoWhich is ironic considering that Gay itself is also a very valid first name. For example, Gay Byrne[1], who was sort of like the Irish Johnny Carson; a big cultural figure. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Byrne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Byrne
- pryelluw 4y agoPeter File from the IT Crowd.
- Gys 4y agoAlso irrelevant, I have next of kin named ‘Cock’. Always good for strange faces, especially when confirming the spelling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_(surname) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_(surname)
- Archelaos 4y agoA little quiz: Which famous philosopher do English speakers often shy away from pronouncing his name correctly because it reminds them of the equivalent female body part? (Please don't spoil the answer.)
- boomboomsubban 4y agoImmanuel? What's fun about trying to rember every philosopher you know and seeing if they could be a dirty word? I spent so long trying to figure out if Aristotle has been mispronounced my entire life. edit I say what fun is it, but that's basically the plot of a Seinfeld episode.