I love being Fanny. So laugh your head off at my expense

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/19/i-love-being-fanny

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Muff. Pussy. Snatch. There are lots of names used for the vagina that also sound like something else. Fanny is another. But it is also my name. Having borne it all my life, I have become used to watching for people’s reactions when I tell them. Some instantly respond: “Great name.” Others need nursing through it, to the point that I’ve taken to offering alternatives: “... Or Frances or Fran or Fan. Whatever makes you most comfortable.”

This week it was reported that a Swedish expat in London had been refused a store loyalty card on the grounds that her first name was Fanny. The woman in question – Fanny Carlsson – now uses her middle name, Linnéa, instead. And while thousands of Swedish women are called Fanny these days, it’s not so common in this country. So, as a British Fanny, you have to tough it out.

Inevitably there are inconveniences that come with the name. My emails often rebound or get stuck in people’s spam filters, and I’m going to have to somehow educate my still innocent six-year-old daughter never to google it.

My parents wanted to christen me Fanny but both sets of grandparents were outraged and forbade it, so I was christened Frances but known as Fanny or Fan from day one.

At my rural primary school the headmistress was worried I’d get a lot of flak when I went up to the comprehensive. So for the whole of my last summer term, the primary school (all 26 of us) referred to me as Frances so that I wouldn’t get my head beaten in when we moved. My primary school friends were nearly all Methodist farmers’ children, and whether their religious background helped them keep my secret I don’t know – but my name didn’t leak until I was in my second year at secondary school, and by then I was practised at shrugging off ridicule with distraction. “I’m called Fanny, so what? Have you seen Susan Morton’s boobs?”

Frances is the grown-up dullard name that must prevail when I’m doing my taxes or applying for points cards or renewing my passport. When I’m in trouble with myself I call myself Frances. But my career name has always been Fanny Johnstone, for the two obvious reasons that it’s my name and it quietly gets me noticed. Invoices for journalism have been paid to Fanny and the bank has – from time to time – accepted them with no fuss.

All in all, I’m happy to stand proud and say that I love being called Fanny.

Perhaps I’m kidding myself, but I feel it gives me a certain air of sex, giddiness and glamour, which pretty much sums me up (in my head at least). “Fan” is sweet whereas “Fanny” can raise a smile. The Johnstone tones it down a bit, unlike the surname of my inspiring Fanny-counterpart, Fanny Ardant. Ardant! A game my husband and I often play is “surnames I could have had through marriage” … Power, Garden and Bush being the milder ones of a terrible and seemingly endless spectrum. I’ll let you come up some of your own. Laugh your head off at my expense.

It’s also a useful icebreaker. What turned out to be a hilarious friendship began when I was sent around to “fix” the legendary journalist Jeffrey Bernard’s typewriter (my mother had just sold it to him second-hand). After I’d revealed that it was electric, and you just had to turn it on, Jeffrey – that unshockable, debauched chronicler of low-life Soho – asked my name.

“Fanny” I said.

“Fanny?” he said, suspicious that anybody could be called that.

“Yes.” There was a pause. We looked at each other. Sizing each other up. Giving nothing away. Eventually he yielded.

“Fanny? Bloody hell. I can’t call you that. It’ll have to be Franny.”

But perhaps my crowning moment was when I was MC of the burlesque troupe Whoopee at the Cobden Club. Nothing got the audience more easily warmed up – or made the MC happier – than having a legitimate reason to shout the word “Fanny” as I stood alone on the stage.

I can still feel the roar.