#secret languages

There are two main competing etymologies for this word. I'll start with the one that I think is less likely: that the word is related to English bugger and French bougre. These words have been used in various parts of Europe to mean "sodomite" for centuries, deriving from accusations leveled at the Bogomil and Cathar heresies by the Catholic Church during the medieval period. These groups were gnostics, and (according to the Church) hated the sinful physical world to the point of being antinatalists: people who believe having children is morally wrong. So far this might in theory be true, but they were also quite dubiously accused of encouraging sodomy among followers to this end. The word bugger itself is presumed to either come from Bogomil or Bulgarian, since the Balkans were the origin point of these heresies.

We know for a fact that the word was borrowed into Swedish as buger (bugern, bugrar, bugrarna) around 1900, a word used by, among others, Swedish literary titan August Strindberg. That's also where the etymology for bög becomes a bit troublesome, because bög does not appear to have been a warping of the pronunciation of this word: it is already known to have existed in the Swedish lexicon at this time.

The alternate explanation goes back to the knallar, peddlers in particularly mid-southern Sweden (Västergötland/Westrogothia) who walked door to door selling whatever they could carry with them in the countryside. These people saw their peak around the 18th and 19th centuries, before declining into obscurity at the start of the 20th. These wandering salesmen are a fascinating topic in their own right, but what's particularly important for us is their secret language, Månsing (sometimes Monsing). The Swedish language has a rich and fascinating vocabulary of words I like to call "permanent slang." These words come from thieves' cants, the secret languages of professionals (such as Månsing and Knoparmoj, the chimneysweep language), and several minority languages like Yiddish and Romani Chib. Well-known Swedish words like tjej (girl), jycke (dog) and sno (steal) are all regarded as slang in the public eye, even though the words have been in use for well over a century, if not several centuries. Since slang is usually either quickly invented and forgotten or incorporated into standard language, this is very interesting in my opinion.

One such source for "permanent slang" is Månsing. The language is extinct now, and only caught the attention of linguists when it was already in decline, but we still have a few hundred vocabulary words documented, and one of the oldest and most widespread is bögis. This word bears a striking resemblance bög, and the -is ending is a very common Swedish diminuitive, probably first introduced in Månsing where it was probably borrowed from latin, such as in the Månsing word for dog, kanis (from canis). This ending was then (perhaps humorously) added to other words, like jamis, cat (from the Swedish verb jama, to meow).

The problem is the meaning of the word. Bögis does not mean gay, sodomite, or anything of the sort, it means peasant or farmer. The related word bögishäck means farm, and so on.

The reason why this is still a plausible origin of bög has to do with the relationship these peddlers had with farm owners. The knallar were seen as anything from semi-honest traders to downright scam artists and smugglers, so what would farmers have been from their perspective? Either prospective customers or potential victims to mislead and make money off of. This use of the word bögis came to enter city slang, where it took on a new meaning among people who had different life experiences.

In the late 19th century, slang and cant dictionaries start reporting the word bögis or bög as being part of the lexicon of the lower layers of the growing city of Stockholm. The "lumpen," the thieves and prostitutes, used the word to either mean "someone who is easily fooled" or as a synonym for "mark" or "target," that is, someone you intend to either sell something to, or rob. The connection to the way the knallar used it is fairly obvious.

Over time, the word came to usually refer specifically to the customer of a prostitute, and eventually specifically one of a male prostitute, and then also the male prostitute himself, though the path there was long. In the early 20th century, bög was still competing with the previously mentioned buger, as well as with sodomit, kvinnohatare (woman-hater), homofil, homos, and several words relating to pederasty.

By the 1910s it appears that bög was winning out, and as the gay movement came to Sweden in the 70s, the word began to be reclaimed by activists, though the exact level of offense the word carries is still a bit complicated, as mentioned.

This etymology makes bög a sister word to the English word gay, which was also originally slang used in growing cities by thieves and prostitutes. It also connects it to schwul, a German word with a similar story.

This also gives us an interesting social history of the LGBT+ movement: perhaps the reason why queer rights became an issue in the 20th century is because there was no such thing as a queer subculture until the 19th century, and the reason why it emerged then is very specifically because that's the when big U Urbanizarion took place, and thus when urban crime and underground communities emerged, which have a very distinct character from their rural counterparts. In other words, maybe big cities led to the emegence of an underclass of thieves and prostitutes, and maybe we have thieves and prostitues to thank for queer rights today! That's just a speculation, though.