It looks like your browser might not support this version of the site! Everything below this probably looks blank or mangled to you, doesn't it? Sorry about that!
To view a lite version that should work on all mobile devices and older browsers,
click here.
To view a list of words used in a language, select that language on the list on the left. To narrow down your language search, you may click a region on the map to only show languages
spoken in that country. When viewing a language you may also select a language family, then the language list will only show languages from that family. To return to the full list of languages,
click the "[Go Back]" link above the list of languages. When viewing a language, you can click on a word to see more information about it and its etymology. Most words also have sources for their
information. Clicking the source number will show more information about that source.
On the map, you can click the + or - to zoom in, or click the c to clear your selections. Family View
colors the regions based on their predominant language families. Penis View and Vagina View color the regions based on the average number of words for penis and vagina each language
in that region has. Darker regions have less words, and lighter ones, on average, have 3 or more words. P/V Ratio View colors regions based on the ratio of words for penis and vagina each
country has. Blue countries have more words for penis, while pink countries have more words for vagina. You can also search for a term or word, and regions that contain that term or word will be
selected.
Hey kids! There is an updated version of this resource available here!
Welcome to the World Sexual Terminology Resource, a webpage for learning about what people around the world call their genitalia. The goal of this project is to make it
easier to observe how cultures around the world view their sexuality through language, and to compare and contrast the trends that have developed.
When you want to look something up online, you Google it. In 100 years, search engines may be entirely different, and it's likely that Google won't be
the most well-known search engine anymore. The verb to Google, however, will probably still be used to refer to searching the internet. In the future, it will be just another word
like escalator, zipper, or aspirin. However, it has captured some of the English-speaking world's history in its usage. There's a reason we still Google things,
even when we're using DuckDuckGo or Bing, because when Google first hit the web, it was so good at what it did that, even now, it's still the only search engine worth using for most people.
In the future, Google may die out or lose its grasp on the search market, but we'll still Google things, and every time we do, the history of the early Internet will still be there
in that word.
The examples I gave before are also genericised trademarks. Zippers were originally only made by B. F. Goodrich, and the Otis Escalator Company originally owned the
trademark to the word escalator[22]. Other companies just made moving staircases. Now, any moving staircase is an
escalator. However, cultural history is stored in nearly every word we use, not just genericised trademarks. When you get gypped out of something, it may just mean that you
got ripped off, but the word's origins aren't that innocent. The word was coined in the late 1800's as a shortening of Gypsy[3].
Knowing that, it's not too hard to figure out how Gypsies were viewed in American society back then.
This issue isn't unique to English or the United States; words usually don't come from thin air anymore. For example, Cantonese is a character-based language. Instead of
using an alphabet like we do, they use characters to represent words. Instead of spelling out m-a-n, they just use two characters, 男人, pronounced nam yan. The first
character, 男 (nam), means male, and the second character, 人(yan), means person. Unlike English, where letters like m, a, and n usually
mean nothing on their own, each character has its own meaning already, and they can be combined to create new words. What is a man? A male human. That's pretty straightforward. Sometimes
they can be more abstract in nature, such as the Mandarin word for cuttlefish, 乌贼 (wūzéi), is composed of the characters for dark/black and thief. Unlike
male human, this tells us more about how the Chinese viewed cuttlefish when they coined this term than it does about the cuttlefish itself.[51]
Cuttlefish aren't very important parts of everyday life for most people. Sexuality is. In our society it is very uncommon to last very long without either engaging in
sexual activity, thinking about it, seeing it, or being told about it. Whether it's seeing a couple kissing in public or having someone tell you that sex before marriage will send you to Hell,
the junk between our legs has a pretty big presence in society. So, why not look into the origins of the words we use for our genitalia to see what people thought of sex back in the day? Worldwide,
the results aren't too different. Many trends exist across cultures and oceans, so even across nations we can still come together and embrace the fact that lots of our ancestors thought penises and
birds - especially roosters - apparently looked pretty similar.
I've compiled the data on this site to compare and contrast how different societies have viewed sex throughout the ages. Sometimes the results can be funny (what language currently
has the most slang words for penis that also happen to be used for foods? Italian), other times, hinting at some larger problems (such as the vagina being a hole to be used for man's pleasure, or
using the words vulva and vagina interchangably (see vulva disclaimer below)). Since I am not a professional (see the reference disclaimer below), I am not making any claims or statements
with this, only hoping to let others learn a bit more about how the world views sexuality through etymology. If you have information you'd like to add to the page, please let me know,
I'd love to add more to this site. I hope you'll find this page as interesting and informative as I did.
VULVA DISCLAIMER: In American English, the words vulva and vagina are often used interchangeably. This may or may not be the case in other
languages and cultures, however, I am not able to say this for certain for one main reason: most of the dictionaries and resources I used were written in English. When I came across a dictionary entry
that listed a single word as meaning vagina and/or vulva, I was not certain if this was a bias imposed by the person who wrote the dictionary entry in English, or if the vagina/vulva confusion was also
present in that language. Because of this, many entries may use the two words interchangeably, because I do not want to make claims about languages I am completely unfamiliar with.
REFERENCE DISCLAIMER: I am not an etymologist, linguist, anthropologist, historian, professor, researcher, or anyone else whose opinions or credentials
might give this page any sort of weight or merit. I do not speak any of the languages covered on this website except English and a high school level of Spanish. This page should
definitely not be used as a primary source by any means. There is no guarantee that any of the information on this page is accurate in any way whatsoever. While I can guarantee,
for example, that the word penis in English is penis and the word for vulva in English is vulva, that is the extent to which I will state that anything on
this page can be assumed accurate. All sources are provided for all information that I have gathered, and if no source is provided for a word, it is presumed to be from either
the English Wiktionary or Google Translate. Please use the provided sources for reference,
assuming they have any credibility, which I'm sure many of them don't. If you see a problem, a source that's wrong, or any other problems with the content of this site, please
contact me and let me know as soon as possible. If you would like to contribute to the site and have a source for your information, please
contact me, because, even though this website is probably full of inaccuracies right now, my goal is for it to one day be a lovely reference that won't be
looked upon with contempt by anyone who actually knows anything about the topics covered on it.
MAP DISCLAIMER: I did not make the map that is used on this page, and it may be out-of-date or incorrect in its depiction of countries. Perhaps it lists
an area that is disputed as a country or vice versa. I am not attempting to make any political statements by including or omitting any countries from the map. If you feel that the map is
seriously flawed, feel free to contact me and let me know, and, assuming that changing the map won't offend more people than not changing it would, I will gladly
attempt to fix this issue. Some smaller island countries are also not included on this map. I am aware of this issue, and in the future, when more language data on the countries in
question are found, this may be resolved.
CONTENT DISCLAIMER: The topics covered on this site may be considered taboo or offensive to some. The goal of this site is not to shock or offend people with
potty words, but to serve as a resource for the etymology of sexual terminology across the world. If you are offended by such material, perhaps this site is not the best place for you
to be. Feel free to check out my comic website which is much more vulgar and profane, but without the pretext of being academic to justify the
frequent use of profanities like dick, cooter, and puppydial.