Doofunny, Dofunny

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nikki calling from Northampton, Massachusetts.

Hey, Nikki.

Noho, welcome to the show.

Hi, Nikki.

Thank you.

Hi.

Well, I have this, it’s kind of a mystery.

It’s a word, a term that my dad used to use with us when we were little and while we were growing up.

And it is something that has stuck with me and I use it.

And I use it, and also my wife uses it, and she’s from Israel, and now our twin uses it as well.

And I was always wondering what the origin of the word was.

Was it something that my dad made up?

Was it something that he kind of picked up based upon where he grew up?

He was an African-American man, and he grew up in Indiana.

And he grew up surrounded by working class African-Americans, but also working class Eastern Europeans, immigrants.

So I was kind of wondering what this word, which is kind of a strange sounding word, just what its origins were.

This is quite a buildup. I can’t wait to hear what the word is.

That makes two of us. The word is do funny.

Do funny. How do you spell do funny?

I think it’s just kind of it’s D-O and then F-U-N-N-Y. And I think that’s how he spelled it or that, you know, that’s what he said. Yeah.

Did he use it as a noun or a verb or how would he use it?

A do funny was just kind of a person with unusual ways. It was like someone with maybe odd ways. It was, well, it was kind of the cherry on the top of oddness.

So if he was going to use it, he was going to say, well, gosh, that person is, you know, oh, you know, do funny.

And, I mean, I’ve used it and I’ve said it about people who, you know, have done something that is kind of odd, kind of weird, you know, not horrible, but just a little strange.

So I’d say, oh, you know, the do funny is down the street or this or that.

As far back as the 1850s, Doofunny, both with the single O spelling, D-O-F-U-N-N-Y, and with the double O spelling, D-O-O-F-U-N-N-Y, was used as a funny last name for characters in satire, whether it was in the newspapers or on stage.

Oh, wow.

You know, this keeps happening again and again. And by the 1970s, it’s used as what is sometimes known as indefinite specifics, words like doohickey or thingamajig or whatchamacallit. So these are words, hand me that do funny, you know, or I don’t, give me the what the do funny, you know, you know, it’s usually situations where it’s clear what you mean, but you can’t think of the true name right at the moment.

This whole time from the 1850s forward, it continues to be used as a funny name.

Like there’s one work of fiction where a daughter uses it to refer to her father.

She calls him Old Doofunny in a humorous kind of confrontational way.

There was a newspaper columnist by the name of Peter Finley Dunn, who wrote under the pen name of Mr. Dooley, pretending to be an Irish barman in Chicago newspapers.

And he wrote this kind of Chicagoese dialect column.

And he often wrote, used the name Doofunny.

He used it as a placeholder last name.

You know, again, kind of like using thingamajig or doohickey.

He used Doofunny.

Oh, Mr. Doofunny over here.

Because he couldn’t remember the name.

Or he didn’t want to print it.

But the real key here, Nikki,

And tell me if this rings a bell,

There was a play called the do funny family that was performed around the country from the 1920s.

Going forward and even through the 20s and 30s and 40s well into the 70s and 80s you can still find it.

Mentioned in you know the entertainment sections of newspapers as being performed like usually.

Small town theater you know like something put on by the the school or the pta or the the old.

Folks home, that sort of thing. And it was broad humor and slapstick gags, lots of running around,

Farcical stuff, singing old songs with new silly lyrics, people wearing clothes that are too big or

Too small. That definitely sounds like something that would be in the Do Funny universe that I was

That I was afforded to growing up. Yeah, that name of the play is pretty much a trailer right there.

Yeah, the Do Funny family. So, I mean, according to what I see in the listings of the newspaper, this play was widely presented across the country. And I would not be surprised if this is the kind of the place where Do Funny, meaning a goofy person, was popularized. And it’s possible that’s where your father picked it up.

But there’s another element here. You mentioned the African-American connection. There is a use of do funny used in the black community referred to a gay man. And I wonder if he had that meaning as well. And for him, it just meant somebody who was out of the usual or out of the ordinary.

You know what? It could have. My brother and sister and I kind of debated this, and my brother said, well, he did say funny. He didn’t put the do funny on it when he spoke of certain things, but certain other things he did put do funny on.

And he would never mean it as anything malicious or anything to kind of, you know, to hurt anyone.

He would always mean it as somebody, okay, what is that person doing?

They’re just acting like a doofunny.

So, you know, it was probably picked up when he was younger from all of these elements, which is actually really, really fascinating to me.

And I can’t wait for my siblings to hear that.

Yeah, it’s possible it was just floating the ether.

None of these sources are where he picked it up.

He could have just learned it from somebody else.

But that’s what we know about DoFun.

It does have 150 years plus of history being used as a goofy last name.

Oh, that’s so interesting.

Yeah, Nikki, that’s one heck of a linguistic heirloom.

I’m glad you’re carrying it on.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I am too.

And I’m so grateful for you both.

Thank you so much for helping me with that.

Well, thank you for your call and thanks for listening.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Nikki.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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