Hacker News Reader

Comment by lb1lf | Hacker News Reader

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.)

View on HN

Peder means "gay", not pedophile in croatian (or serbian). A bit less problematic, but still not that acceptable in the balkans.

Ah, 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.

In a bunch of Slavic languages pederast colloquially means homosexual, probably a holdover from the past.

In 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.

In 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.

I’m pretty sure ‘Petar’ is the equivalent name there

Also, it is explicitly a pejorative term, as opposed to "gej" (literal transliteration of "gay"), which is a neutral term.

Which 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

Exactly the same in Russian.

Also 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)

A 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.)

Immanuel? 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.

Peter File from the IT Crowd.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com