Fucking

Fucking (IPA: [ˈfʊkɪŋ] — rhymes approximately with English "looking") is a small settlement (population c. 150), part of the municipality of Tarsdorf, in the Innviertel region of western Upper Austria, located at 48°02′59″N, 12°50′59″E, bordering Bavaria. It is near the city of Salzburg. The village is known to have existed as "Fucking" since at least 1070 and is named after a man from the 6th century called Focko. "Ing" is an old Germanic suffix meaning "people"; thus Fucking, in this case, means "place of Focko's people".

The name, spelled identically to the gerund form of the often-used English profanity "fuck", is often found amusing by Anglophones. In German the name has no obvious associations, amusing or otherwise, although many German speakers will be aware of the English word. The German cognate of "to fuck", regarded equally low as the English word (or possibly more obscene, as it is almost never used figuratively), is ficken (IPA [ˈfɪkən]).

The settlement's most famous feature is a traffic sign with its name on it beside which English-speaking tourists often stop to have their photograph taken. The sign is the most commonly stolen street sign in Austria. Significant amounts of public funds are spent on replacing the stolen signs. In August 2005 the road signs were replaced with theft-proof signs welded to steel and secured in cement to make the signs harder to take.

T-shirts bearing the town name have proven a big hit in souvenir shops. The town's notoriety has spread so wide that buses full of American tourists travel there to be photographed in front of the landmark sign.

In 2004, owing to the stolen signs and embarrassment over the name, a vote was held on changing the name, but the residents voted against doing so.