Dusting down the Ernest Weekley book from the shelf to be photographed for the paper yesterday set me off dipping in to it again.
There I came across a little gem of etymology which perhaps indicates that the Bold Ernest wasn’t such a prude as Lawrence thought him.

This concerns the origins of the French word for a tap, as in faucet.

Ernest explains that the nicknames for girl and boy in France are, from the Robin Hood myth, Robin et Marianne.
This corresponds roughly with Jack and Jill or Darby and Joan in English.
(Marianne is still the name for the topless French symbol of the revolution in 1798)

Robin, being the male symbol, gave us, by extension; Robinet,the slang term for the male appendage (see Willy or Dick in English) and then by obvious analogy became the familiar term for a tap.
(Again note how the English term for that malest of all male birds, the cock, extended itself to the term for a tap, as in stopcock etc.)

Knowing this always somehow makes the conversation with our French plumber, about the types of Robinet we want in the bathrooms, just a little surreal.