Talk:Pinky swear

Untitled
I have removed the following text from the article:
 * In England, the pinky swear is commnonly associated with a broken pinky finger, where in some cases is permanently healed in the bent "pinky swear" position. In the media, this was referred to in the soap opera television program Eastenders on the August 25 2006 episode "Mystery de Vries".

This seems unlikely for numerous reasons. Firstly, I have never encountered this "pinky swear" before stumbling upon this article today, despite having lived in England all my life, which suggests that it can hardly be considered to be "commonly associated" with anything at all in this country. Indeed, the term "pinky" itself is not used in England.

Secondly, the claim that this was used in EastEnders seems to be made up. EastEnders episodes do not have titles, and Google returns no relevant search results for the alleged name "Mystery de Vries" outside this article.

Given these facts, it would appear almost certain that this claim was inserted as hoax-type vandalism. &mdash; Haeleth Talk 22:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Really? Because pinky swears are extremely common among schoolchildren in America. I've done it a million times as a kid. I had no idea it originated in Japan. Kind of strange. How would it have gotten to the West? ForestAngel (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Pinky Promise
'Pinky promise' redirects to this page (which is how I came here), so I would expect to find some information about this term here. However, all the article has to say about 'pinky promise' is that it should not be confused with 'pinky swearing'. There should either be more information provided (I can't add anything, I have no clue as to whether such a thing even exists) or the redirect removed.

Is worth noting that Pinky Promises are considered as promises which should not be broken. These are the strongest forms of promises which can be made and are in my part of the world 'Tasmania, Australia' are considered sacred promises between close people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.213.185 (talk) 07:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Wrong Title
This article suggests that 'pinky promise' is the more popular term for the concept. If that is so (which personally I believe it is) then the title of this article should be altered, instead of pandering to colloquial Americanisms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.10.141.228 (talk) 22:59, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Pinky swear originates with the Yakuza?
Sounds unlikely. I can't see the cited source, but having been around Wikipedia a long time, and also having seen some of the stuff that used to be on this page, I suspect the source doesn't really support the claim. I suspect it just says that the Yakuza some practice of cutting of people's fingers as retribution for betrayal, and it is the Wikipedia author is the one making the inference that the english "pinky swear" originates from this. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 19:28, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

A google books search for | "pinky swear" yakuza brings up the referenced book, unfortunately there's no preview available, so I can't verify what it says myself. 46.7.236.155 (talk) 19:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Episode 9 of the Seinen animé XxxHOLiC is titled "Pinky Promise" and, while not about the Yakuza, it gives an alternate take on the cutting off of a finger when one character says it "seems to have been a custom of prostitutes during the Edo period to cut off the pinky of their own left hand and give it to the companion they liked [to avoid breaking the thread]" (2m50s or so into the episode). In the same episode a children's rhyme is translated in the subtitles as
 * Pinky promise,
 * Hope to die
 * Swallow a thousand needles
 * If you lie
 * I'm not certain if that is an actual translation from Japanese or just substituting in an American rhyme - the whole concept is unheard of by me in the UK. Cattwister (talk) 22:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like to see this cleared up. Is it just a coincidence that pinky swear is (according to the article) called finger cut-off in Japanese while at the same there is the concept of yubitsume? Are they completely unrelated? Which came first? Maybe yubitsume originates from yubikiri? What is the earliest dated document mentioning yubitsume and yubikiri respectively? And how was yubikiri used originally and by whom? Which social class? Are there any known cases of people having their pinky cut off as a result of a broken promise? Some indicators of time would be nice. Torr3 (talk) 14:57, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

We've got a date for its use in American slang (1860). Japan was largely isolated from the West until about 1853. It seems quite unlikely that a Japanese custom would leak over to American slang in just a handful of years, in a pre-mass-media society. It seems much more likely to be parallel evolution. Jordan Brown (talk) 22:54, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Euphemism
The quoted source has "the bad place" rather than "hell," even though the latter rhymes and the former does not. As the source is online, it's quite easy to verify this. Please don't change this without providing a different source. ubiquity (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

A mess
This article is a mess of hearsay and original research. The only solid citation is the Dictionary of Americanisms. The notion that it originated in Japan (which was isolated until 1854) and yet somehow had become an Americanism (at least in New York) by 1860 is implausible. Even within Japan, the connection between the children's pinky swear and the yakuza practice seems like a stretch. I would further note that the Japanese Wikipedia article is useless as a source, since it is utterly citation free. It seems the only responsible thing to do is to eliminate any claims of origin until solid citations are presented. It is possible to introduce various pinky swear customs without saying that one or the other is the source of all the others. (Parallel evolution, anyone?) To be honest, the "originated in Japan" hypothesis stinks of Japanese chauvinism/weeabooism, and I say that as somehow who has lived and worked in Japan most of her adult life and is married to a Japanese.--User:Rachel Thorn (talk) 03:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 January 2022 and 18 March 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yoshi-dawg.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)