Current Usage of Fanny

We are thinking about giving our daughter the name Fanny. We are Germans, based in Germany but we're really curious about the current usage of this word in Great Britain. We are familiar with the vulgar meaning of the word, but wondering if this is still a sense which is often used and still offensive to others. I can only find postings from years ago on that topic. Thanks a lot for your opinion!

The closest you will get to the scientific determination of the rudeness of a word is a public survey. OFCOM, the British media regulator, has conducted research to measure the offensiveness of different words, which was reported on in 2018.

They rate "fanny" as strong: there are four categories of offensive language, mild, medium, strong, and strongest. Fanny is alongside such strong terms as twat, minge, cock, dick, bellend, and bastard, and higher than medium terms including bitch, balls, bollocks, shit, and tits. Strongest includes only 3 terms, which are left as an exercise for the reader.

So it's quite rude.

Fanny is typically a diminutive for Frances, although it can come from other names as well.

However, it is the easy-to-pronounce diminutives that are most likely to have vulgar meanings in other languages.

Practically, a lot of embarassment can be spared by giving a child the full name as their legal name, and using the diminutive only at home, or with family and friends. A child can drop their nickname as a part of growing up. Legal names are a different matter.

Fanny is not a rude word in Canada or the United States. The OFCOM standards mentioned in one of the other answers are mostly applicable to Great Britain, and are probably not universal even there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_(name)