Switching on the filth filter

I’D NEVER heard of “the Scunthorpe problem” until about 4am on Tuesday, when insomnia saw me catching up on some reading matter over a large mug of freshly brewed coffee.

I know Scunthorpe is England’s largest steel processing centre but I’ve never been there, and of its problem I knew nothing.

I do now, thanks to etymology enthusiast Tom Chatfield, who’s just released a book called Netymology: A Linguistic Celebration of the Digital World.

Turns out “the Scunthorpe problem” isn’t confined to that English town – it’s a geeky label emanating from something that happened there in the late 1990s. Its definition made me chuckle so much my coffee ended up everywhere.

Explained Tom in the UK’s Guardian: “Computing can be as much combat as collaboration and the Scunthorpe problem is a perfect example. Entirely innocent words can fall victim to machine filth-filters thanks to unfortunate sequences of letters within them, and, in Scunthorpe’s case, it’s the second to fifth letters that create the difficulty.”

Well, of course!

So bad was the problem that, at one time, the poor townsfolk were prevented by internet service AOL from setting up user accounts. The effect became known in cyber circles as the Scunthorpe problem – a dubious honour, I reckon. “… those who live in Penistone, South Yorkshire – or people with surnames like Cockburn – may be equally familiar with algorithms’ censorious tendencies,” notes the author.

He doesn’t mention what those so-called filth-filters made of some of Britain’s other myriad “mucky” names.

Some of them are so colourful they’re enough to make a bishop blush.

Take your pick from such horrors as the hamlet (we’d call it a dorp, I guess) of Shitterton in Dorset; Crapstone in Devon; or Old Sodbury in Gloucestershire.

Shitterton – it supposedly means little town on the stream of a midden or sewer – topped the list of most embarrassing British place names in a survey last year. I wouldn’t mind betting those who live there pooh- poohed that result (sorry!). They’re so proud of the name that most of the 50-odd households chipped in around R280 each to have it chiselled into a solid marble block heavy enough to end repeated thefts.

Such schoolboy snigger-inducing places as Brokenwind in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Backside, also in Aberdeenshire will, of course, easily slip through the filters. As will Scratchy Bottom in Dorset; Happy Bottom, also in Dorset; Sandy Balls in southern England’s New Forest area; Golden Balls in Oxfordshire; and Pratts Bottom in Kent.

Author Philip K Dick, on whose books several films have been based, including Minority Report and Bladerunner, isn’t always so lucky. Only this week, a list of some of his books sent to the beloved arrived as follows: “Philip K ~censored~ The Divine Invasion; Philip K ~censored~ Radio Free Albemuth; Philip K ~censored~ A Scanner Darkly; Philip K ~censored~ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Reminds me of the time my own name was “censored” on 5fm’s Chuckle and Chat Show: I was introduced on-air as Stevie Bleepson!

Today’s Chiel is Stevie Godson. E-mail her at