Serviettes. Did I ask for something strange?

[ALongHardWinter]

There were no serviettes on the stand for sauces,straws etc so I asked the server for some. He gave me a funny look and said 'Some what?' I repeated my request but he still looked blank. So I said 'Tissues?'. He said 'Oh right. I've never heard them called serviettes'. Really? That's what I've always called them. Anyone else encountered a blank look when asking for a supposedly common place item?

I have never said serviette. I am not that posh.

I usually say napkin, but agree with you op, the word seems a bit out of place in McDonalds. I probably would have gone with serviette too.

I would say serviette but I've heard them being called napkin too. I think one word is the "posh" word for it and the other is the "common" word but I can never remember which way round it is.

It's a paper napkin

Napkins used to be for babies, but how it's nappies.

my mum always called them serviettes bless her

If he was taught English as a second language by a US speaker it’s unlikely he would have come across the word serviette.

Even lower mc would not say serviettes or pardon I don't know about pardon, but in my professional mc household we had silver plated serviette rings to hold our damask serviettes.

It was in McDonald's,if that makes any difference. I thought napkins sounded too posh!

We call them napkins and the boxes they come in have napkins written on the side.

serviette (n.)
"table napkin," late 15c., from Middle French serviette "napkin, towel" (14c.), of uncertain origin, perhaps from past participle of servir "to serve" (see serve (v.)). Primarily Scottish at first; re-introduced from French 1818.

I call them serviettes and I'm common as muck.

When McDonalds came to our town in the mid 1980s, DM took my sister and I there for a treat. She asked the guy behind the counter where the cutlery and crockery were! He replied "What's that?!?"

Napkin is the “posh” word. As a general rule, the further away from French an English word for something sounds, the posher it is. See also dessert/pudding and toilet/lavatory.

Serviettes is the more "common" version. I once read that if it sounds like pretend french its common. Ie Settee instead of sofa

Isn't there folklore about silver napkin rings being for poor people who can't afford for them to be laundered after every meal .

I think the people who give a fuck aren't really the people who matter.

Serviette is such a non-U word don't you know darling?

Napkin = paper
Serviette = linen

I grew up in the 70s with serviettes, pardon, settee and lounge.

Now i would say napkins as serviettes (and all of the above) sounds so Margo Leadbetter (who i'll admit with anonymity is actually my power animal).

Ah, re-introduced from French. That'd be the problem. Like 'Buck-et'.

I'd call them paper towels or serviettes, and think napkins is the term for the cloth ones in restaurants, but I am both old and common.

As an experiment I asked teenage DS what a serviette was, and he - guessing wildly - described what sounded like the bastard child of a multi-tier cake stand and a lazy susan. He saw napkin as something that could be make out of paper or cloth. I have given birth to Little Lord Fauntleroy.

I like some of Betjeman, bujt I hate that 'snobby ditty' (thanks, Hesterton).

I can't get too exercised about serviettes v napkins (serviette is not a Brit thing - Serviette is what Germans call the paper and cloth ones alike), but calling them tissues? WTF?

“but in my professional mc household we had silver plated serviette rings to hold our damask serviettes”

Ooh, 3 three clear “markers” there. You wouldn’t get past the Dowager Dutchess.........

Napkins could go in the washing machine whereas a serviette would disintegrate.
You'd find serviettes at a cafe but napkins in a restaurant etc.

And it's loo
And pudding.

Agree. And back to the OP it would be paper napkins (for paper napkins) and napkins for cloth/linen napkins. We had it drummed into us that 'serviettes' was common. I don't agree, but obviously got into the habit of calling them paper napkins.