Obscene Names and Naming in Folk Tradition

Abstract

IN HIS BRIEF INTROD UCTION to that pioneering venture into serious consideration of traditional erotica which appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of American Folklore,1 Frank Hoffman pointed out that this field of study had received virtually no recognition by folklorists until the symposium of which he was chairman met to consider this matter in the winter of 1960. Hoffman and his colleagues made us clearly aware of the problems inherent in the systematic study and analysis of this area of folklore. They also reminded us of our obligation as scholars to consider all facets of folk experience and expression as objectively as possible and that, if mass acceptance of scholarly findings is not yet upon us, they should at least be made available to serious students of the discipline by way of articles in professional journals. This paper will, therefore, be a consideration of erotica, or preferably obscenity, in the area of nomenclature. To my knowledge this has not yet been seriously attempted. Although much is known on this subject, and even more is assumed, very little if anything has been brought together in any systematic fashion for careful and considerate analysis. I hope, in this paper to present a brief, objective, and necessarily cautious introduction to obscene nomenclature by first presenting some kind of theoretical framework for its examination, followed by a tentative typology of such names, and a representative sampling of the relevant folklore.