In the Europe 1 program "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern looks every day at the roots of an everyday expression.

Friday, he is interested in the origins of the expression "a name to sleep outside", which means with few manners that a surname seems difficult to you to pronounce or to remember.

Stéphane Bern suggests every day, in 

Historically yours 

with Matthieu Noël, to discover these expressions that we use on a daily basis without necessarily knowing their origin.

Friday, the host explains the roots of "a name to sleep outside".

Do you have names to sleep outside?

Know in any case that this expression, not the most sympathetic, comes from the Middle Ages.

The innkeepers were naturally suspicious, and it must be said that thugs ran the streets and sometimes they asked for a room at the inn.

The latter then had to show a white paw, that is to say not to be disturbing or suspicious. 

>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

"Show white paw" is also an expression that goes back to La Fontaine and his fable of the wolf, the goat and the kid.

The wolf tries to enter the goat there, and the kid says to him "show me a white paw where I will not open to you".

The wolf, black and hairy paw, returns home as it had come.

A strange sort of clientele

But back to our names to sleep outside.

When we wanted to rent a room, those who had a Christian name were favored.

If you came with a particle, we pampered you.

The others went their way or slept in the stable between two canassons.

In England, we talk about "jaw-breaking word", a word to break the jaw. In Hungarian, one says to have a "convoluted name", with us also besides. For the Dutch, it is "to have a name to sprain your tongue". Let us have a thought for all the patronymic disabled in France and Navarre, like those who throughout history have made schoolchildren laugh: gendarme Merda who shot Robespierre, the Chevalier de la Crotte who fought alongside Bayard and the one who wrote "his kisses leave their velvet, on my pale and pink lips, I can still feel them there, I think I have eaten roses". Verses signed by the poet Jules Troccon.