To think this attitude to names like Fanny in old books is silly?

[Carla786]

I've seen posts here agreeing with the new Enid Blyton editions that changed Fanny to Franny and Dick to Rick, some even saying she must have meant it as a double entendre.

 Just seems silly & narrow-minded to me. Not everything was always meant as a double entendre. Should Fanny Price in Mansfield Park also be changed? Or other characters called names that mean different things now? 

I remember my mother passed down a minor Blyton book with a kitten called Bimbo in. Was that Blyton being rude, or just due to the fact that Bimbo was slang for 'kid' then?

Ah right, it was there. Yes, I think I remember being initially confused what he meant & wondering what 'fanny' could be...

Incidentally, another famous Fanny, though not a person, is the Phyllis Calvert melodrama Fanny By Gaslight. I remember my gran having a copy of the DVD on her shelf.

Thanks. My naivetie's been slightly reduced!

I had a great auntie Fanny. She lived to the grand old age of 107 probably because she never married. She was very naughty and used to lend me very saucy books when I was a young teenager.
She called herself Fiona when her name started to be commonly used for female genitalia.

I've come across someone who chose to address a colleague as Richard rather than Dick because she didn't feel she could use his full name....Dick Aird.

Lstrange that other people can choose what to call someone if they don't like the name but get the pronouns wrong and all hell breaks loose

I teach A Christmas Carol to GCSE students and have to warn them every year in advance that the book contains a Dick, a Fanny and a seaman with horny hands. I give them one minute to laugh their heads off, then we move on. 😂

There’s a brand of bread in Spain called Bimbo. Amuses me no end.

🤣That sounds the ideal way. There's no reason students can't cope with this stuff.
I just remembered that Thomas Hardy made the main couple Dick and Fancy in Under The Greenwood Tree. Good thing he didn't call the heroine Fanny, I suppose...

Fanny Robin in Far From the Madding Crowd, though.

Yes,,she's another one!

I remembered also Fanny Logan, the narrator in Nancy Mitford's Pursuit of Love trilogy. Mitford was hardly unaware of double entendres but it was clearly an unremarkable name to her back in 1945-1949.
Did they change Fanny's name for the recent TV adaptation? I hope not.