the origins of "the bird"?

Question

you know sticking out your middle finger. aka sign language for f,u,c,k, you

where does this come from and why is it called the bird

Answer 1

The origin of this gesture is highly speculative, but is quite possibly up to 2500 years old. It is identified as the digitus impudicus ('impudent finger') in Ancient Roman writings [1] and reference is made to using the finger in the Ancient Greek comedy The Clouds by Aristophanes. It was defined there as a gesture intended to insult another.

It has long been told that the famous "two-fingers salute" and/or "V sign" derives from the gestures of English archers, fighting at Agincourt. The myth claims that the French cut off two fingers on the right hand of captured archers and that the gesture was a sign of defiance by those who were not mutilated. Knights of the time were extremely difficult to challenge in open engagement due to the amount of armor they wore, and the enormity of the horses they rode. One problem the knights faced however, was the English longbow. From a garrison or fortification, longbowmen would string their arrows in quick recession and aim for the armors weak spots. This resulted in many casualties for the knights. If the knights did however capture the fortification, they would either kill the longbowmen, or chop off their middle finger (necessary for stringing arrows effectively). As for the bowmen that escaped, upon seeing a knight, they would hold up their middle finger in mockery of the knight as if to say "ha, ha, you didn't get me"[citation needed].

Answer 2

There's a myth surrounding it and English archers. Snopes.com has good debunking of that and this fact, "...the insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (digitus impudicus in Latin) dates from Roman times...." Found at http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/pluckyew.htm

Wikipedia has an article about it, with details on its origins. Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger