(no subject)

[prairiedaun]

The girl's name, 'Fanny', does of course result in chuckles on either side of the Atlantic. Anthony Trollope's mother, Frances, wrote a highly critical book called The Domestic Manners of the Americans. The Americans were rather non-plussed since they simply could not believe that the 'Fanny Trollope' was not a pseudonym. There is also the phrase 'sweet Fanny Adams' which is sometimes abbreviated to 'sweet FA'. Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old child who was murdered and dismembered in Alton, Hampshire, in 1867. Her grave is still there. At around the same time, the British Navy started preserving chopped mutton in tins, and the sailors - always an uncouth lot - described this as 'sweet Fanny Adams' which eventually came to mean 'nothing of any good at all'. An unhappy epitaph to a nasty story.

Am I the only one that thought it meant "sweet fuck-all"?

And yes, this is research. :)

Comments

[zanzibar-mcbean.livejournal.com]

The until-recently-greatest-now-second greatest name that I have ever encountered was that of a girl in Chicago at one of the schools we visited:

Fannie Outlaw

Especially wonderful because of the '-ie' spelling

Aside: The greatest name that I have ever encountered is Chester Winkerton, competitor in the 1945 RPS Championships.

[queensugar.livejournal.com]

And yet, no mention of the vagina meaning...

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

There was mention of it earlier. I admit to taking this a wee bit out of context.

[j-daffodil.livejournal.com]

I always put sweet FA and sweet Fanny Adams as the same. I think its funny that americans use fanny to describe someones bottom whereas we use it as slang for the vagina!

[thegiantkiller.livejournal.com]

I thought it was fuck-all, and I guess it does now, cuz nobody knows the Fanny Adams story but they can still deduce the meaning. Cool.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

What she said. I figure it meant *both* at the same time, originally, but now everyone's forgotten about the girl and the tinned meat.