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Comment by xyproto | Hacker News Reader

It looks great, but imagine the name of the software being "Moron3D". That is the reality for every native Norwegian speaker, since "dust" means "moron" in Norwegian. I don't mean this in a petty way, it's just hard to ignore, for me.

In related news, Honda tried to launch a car in Norway a couple of years back named "Honda Fitta" which roughly translates to "Honda the Cunt". The tagline was: "Fitta is small inside, but grand when you get in. A daily pleasure!"

They quickly changed the name to just "Honda Jazz" instead.

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I'd say it's worth a consideration if it would be some weird word like "Fitta" but since it's a pretty well known english word, I'd say, you have to live with it.

Greeting from Poland where you find versions of "kurwa" (literally: "whore" but used like "fuck" in english) in all kinds of languages as a word for "curve" ;)

I've always wondered if this sort of thing prevents The GIMP from greater adoption.

I think so. Fckeditor changed its name after some debate [1].

I remember the first time I came across it as a wysiwyg plugin for vBulletin and thought fckeditor had an edgy name. It immediately comes to mind in this context.

I felt some pause introducing fckeditor into an internal wikimedia install for a big company filled with old people I was working for at the time, just because I didn't want any waves whatsoever with those folks.

I definitely would not have gotten up in front of them at a weekly meeting and trumpted how great of a tool "gimp" was.

I sort of think people who keep names that are known to be problematic in FOSS are doing so somewhat to passive-troll and to keep normies away. Though my view of this is quite english-centric.

[1] https://ckeditor.com/old/forums/CKEditor-3.x/Should-FCKedito...

Thanks, but it's a little too late to rename, too many things need to sync, such as domain.

I would just put a note on the site that says: "Also known as 'Jazz3D' in Norway" or something. The use case being Norwegian Neckbeards looking to name drop your stuff without risking their intellectual reputation.

And that would be kind of a funny insider joke that would endear you to any dusts who would further hassle you.

I definitely had a hard time demoing octopussy at a previous job, but is moron3d really that bad of a name?

Did git have any trouble gaining traction in England?

Caring too much about this kind of thing is how hibu got their name. I knew some people that worked there in the last days and they all laughed about how it was the ultimate sign they were done.

MongoDB...

e: MongoDB is a perfectly valid example of a brand name that's somewhere in the "very offensive" area in some languages. Like GasjewsDB an easily avoidable cultural pitfall.

Yeah MongoDB always gives me a very-un-PC chuckle as an Australian. It was a common insult growing up in the 80s.

well, Hui is a popular name, but in certain slavic languages it means "dick", "penis". You just have to get used to it.

Same problem with the Chevy Nova selling in spanish-speaking countries. (No va: doesn't go.)

Or the Mitsubishi Pajero in Argentina which literally means Mitsubishi Wanker.

They did change the name though, thankfully.

Another good example is Audi's E-Tron.In French, étron means turd.

This is an urban legend.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...

Oops. Thanks for pointing it out!

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