Half-cocked

[robinturner]

I read in the Daily Telegraph that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has banned the use of the word "cock" on its website in case it causes offence. Posts referring to male birds have had the offending word asterisked out automatically by "the Microsoft software package we [the RSPB] use." This has left ornithologists in a quandary as to what to use for the opposite of a hen. (I naturally searched the RSPB website for "cock" and found only three cases of the word, only one of which referred to a male bird.)

I suggest that if the word "cock" is considered too crude, we replace it by the more innocuous "john thomas". For example, our birdwatchers could make themselves perfectly clear with sentences like "I saw a pair of tits: one john thomas and one hen." Roosters (who of course will now be known as john thomases) will greet the dawn by crowing "john-thomas-a-doodle-do".

This brings me to another subject of popular concern: the use of crudities in names. Fortunately, the name Fanny is less popular than it was, but people persist in shortening Richard to Dick, even on websites which are supposed to be safe for children. Why can't people be polite and shorten Richard to Rick or Ricky? Of course there are a few cases where the name is also a description, in which case we could follow the principle I suggested and say, for example, "John Thomas Cheney".

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Heh. :-)

The phrase "John Thomas" is not known in Liverpool, apparently, as my ex-husband and I discovered to our cost on a visit to a clergyman friend there. After a rather awkward and tiring train journey, we finally arrived and settled down in the living room for a cup of coffee, only for one of his parishioners to walk in at that moment and announce: "John Thomas has just died." How we kept our faces straight at this solemn announcement I am still not quite certain, but it got even worse after that. Our friend explained that the late lamented was a Welshman who had originally been known as Ogwin John Thomas, but when he moved to Liverpool he had dropped the Ogwin because he didn't want everyone to go round calling him Oggy.

*headdesk*

re: the VP

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

I don't trust people who go by the name Dick.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I went to elementary school (not sure what you'd call it in England -- basically from age 5 to 11) with a boy named "Dick Rot."

I swear.

[kesey.livejournal.com]

Some years ago I attended a funeral mass for the father of my neighbor. I knew him as "Richard," but it wasn't until this solemn occasion that I learned most people knew him as Dick - or more formally by his full name: Dick Weed (!)

More recently, we all received emails at work confirming our compliance with a corporate mandate. They came from one Richard Johns - unfortunately displayed in LookOut! as "Johns, Dick"

But .. John Thomas, eh? There are so many of those. My personal preference is for "Mister Happy and the twins," but I don't think that would quite work out in your rooster example ;-)

Excuse me please - nature calls - I must go use the euphemism.