To just call a fanny a fanny?

[teafortoads]

Apologies if this has been done before/to death but i am new to this Mumsnet Lark (posting not lurking, I have happily lurked for years). What on earth word do you give to your toddler to describe their girl parts? I have and always will, have a fanny, where as I am aware of friends who have foofs, fairies (could cause some confusion when you go to put the fairy on top of the Christmas tree) lady gardens vulvas and so on. I see no reason to pretty things up, and always arrive back at good old trusty fanny in the end having massively overthunk things. When DD2 is a little bit older I will furnish her with all the proper words, but are fanny and willie (not that she will encounter any of THOSE until she is at least 40 given that I am a single Mum and our house is happily a man free zone nowadays, and boyfriends will not be permitted until she is at least 40) acceptable? Is fanny a bit coarse?

In our house its Winkie (boy parts) and Winkle (girl parts). Somehow DS is still very confused by the fact me and DD don't have a winkie poking out

It's called a twinkle here till u r about 10 then it becomes "yiur bits"!!

Rat is a rude word?!!!!!! Blimey.

Fanny isn't a rude word where I come from. It's on a par with willy and has the same advantage in that no one mistakes it for something else so from a safeguarding perspective, or just a general not confusing the hell out of people perspective, it's pretty clear what it refers to where as Minnie, fairy and bits all have massive scope for misunderstanding.

We do also use the anatomically correct words too.

And my nan used to call me Fanny Fanacker! No idea where that comes from but clearly Fanny isn't a rude word for her either.

Totally agree with MattDillonspants too - very good post.

Willy isn't the same type of word as fanny. Say at one end of the scale you have winkle and at the other cunt. Willy is a 3 and fanny is a 7 IMO.

The "anotomically correct for child protection reasons" is ridiculous. I have sat in CP interviews (sadly) i have heard everything from minge to beef curtains. Does anyone really think a specially trained police officer is going to say "he touched your flower? I don't understand what a flower is. Interview terminated, please go away"

Don't forget that CP deal with many families where abuse of all kinds are rife. Parents who sexually abuse their children don't exactly take the time to teach them the right language. I have never ever sat in a CP interview and heard a child say penis or vulva. Ever.

To me fanny is the female equivalent of willy. I can't believe it has such shock value.

We say front bottom or vagina, or vavina as ds2 says.
My mums sister is called fanny-mary so we would never use that

Growing up mine was 'bippy'.

DD's is a minkie or parts.

"Wahh, I fell on my bike and my mons pubis is sore"

I did once smack my "mons pubis" on the handle bar of my bike but if I recall correctly I cried about my "fanny".

I'm Scottish. Fanny is a terrible word, really vulgar. Even my adult kids are not allowed to say it! The only acceptable use is the Irn Bru advert. It's also a word which is used as an insult or provocation. I don't think I have ever used it when speaking.

Here we used front bottom for all kids when they were younger.

When I was a kid it was my Letter Box; cue jokes about the postman.

If you want to be anatomically correct and you want one word that covers ALL the external bits, that word's vulva. There really ought to be a universally understood equivalent of willy but I think Matt is right as to the reasons why there isn't.

We use front bum.

Buckinbronco - would it not make a difference when it comes to securing a prosecution rather than at the interviewing stage? Using the correct terms leaves less room for ambiguity.

Not keen on fanny, it sounds rough although my mum called it a fiddley (we are Scottish) and I hated that. My big sis hated it as well and when she had a daughter after having 3 boys we actually discussed what to call it. We though 'flower' was nice and that is what her DD and my DD called it. Looking back, it was probably not the best but we ran with it. My DN's and my DS all used dinger, dingy when they were small then willy as they grew up.
I think this is a great thread and I am a bit surprised to see willy being called coarse.

Fanny is a bit rude in Scotland though.

When I was about 16 I was in the car with my dad when some eejit cut us up and dad had to make an emergency stop.

The man never swore in front of me ever but that day he shouted "fucking fanny!" at the other driver. I was for the rest of the day. Two F-bombs in one sentence! Fanny was the worst one though. It's just so rude

Of course not, how could it? The victims statement is used in evidence and that's that. You can't change it and say "Jane said he touched her pussy but she means vulva m'lord"

'Bits' just makes me think of orange juice.

DD has a self-monikered 'Tonkle', can't remember when or why she started calling it that, but it's stuck. She knows the individual names for the various bits but tonkle is the generic term for the area.

Which is now generally shortened so it's, 'Wipe your tonk', or 'Wash your tonk'.

DS has a willy and testosticles...(or baaaags as DD calls them).

Not sure about fanny, maybe it's a regional thing, it does sound a bit crude to my (Northern) ears.

Again...WHY do you think Fanny is rude, vulgar, crass etc? Why?

It's just a woman's name...as Willy is a man's name.

Buckinbronco - yes, that's what I mean. I think that the argument that it is a safeguarding issue is because without the correct terms there is ambiguity that could potentially weaken the evidence.

Fanny may have been a name like Willy, but so was Dick. I think the rudeness level of the word Fanny is closer to that of Dick.

My boys say willy and attempt to say vagina but more often say pagina. DD is only 2 and I haven't had a reason to use a word yet. I hate the cutesy names, and the correct names are quite difficult to pronounce for a young child. V sounds and L sounds are quite difficult. I won't be saying vulva, she will probably end up saying pagina like her brothers even though it's not technically correct.

I read recently that Sweden invented a new word for the female anatomy and introduced it to preschools. I think it was Snippa. I'd like it if there was a word that could be introduced formally like that to remove any confusion.

The argument of "well you don't say I need to wipe my anus or sphincter" is always dragged out on here and it doesn't stand up. We say bottom and we all know what that means. We say knee and we all know what that means. Calling a woman's genitals a foo or a sweetie or a tuppence is like calling an arm a reachy grab or a leg, a dangle kicker. It's the use of a twee, non universal term and the comparison of patella vs kneecap doesn't work.

I don't much care what anybody calls it tbh as the ability to speak up safely is what matters with things like safeguarding but you don't have any right to declare other people's terms sexual or po-faced when they're just anatomically correct in a world where we've been conditioned to cringe about these words or to use them as hideous insults.

Fanny is perjorative in many places so probably not ideal.

We use anatomical names here. Just because it's naming of parts and I didn't think beyond that.

I think the key thing here is not that maybe in theory you should be able to say fanny if you want, but that in reality if your daughter does use this OP then it might be seen as unacceptable. Depends on where you live by the sound of it on here. Where I'm from it would be quite a vulgar term.

But it wouldn't weaken the evidence. It's not even relevant to the evidence. I don't understand that argument at all

To me fanny is on a par with dick, which is fine for adults to say (though possibly used as a pejorative term for both), but not something you'd use as a terminology for a child's genitals.

As a previous poster said, it's the sort of slang teen lads might use.