I asked my mom, a retired doctor who practised surgical anesthesia for years in the Liverpool, U.K., area, which finger you give to the kidnappers. In terms of patients with actual severed fingers, she's seen a "couple of dozen fingers maybe, and an ear" in her career.
She says you want to give up the first finger on the hand you don't use for writing.
A lot of people think the first, pointing finger is the most important one they have. Wrong! Once it's gone, the other three compensate for it quite well. The second finger, for instance, is already pretty similar to the first finger.
The pinky is actually incredibly important, and it's a keeper.
Basically, the reason humans have "opposable" thumbs — the springboard of our evolution from being just another ape — is that the thing doing the most opposing is the little finger.
According to the assistant chief of hand surgery at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases, the little finger does a disproportionate amount of gripping, while all the other guys are its helpers:
The other three digits—the index, the thumb and the middle finger—they fine tune where the tool goes. So if you have your little finger amputated, you're going to lose a significant amount of grip strength when holding everyday small objects.
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