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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

In what dialect does SpaceX sound exactly like "space sex"? Sounds like a stretch to me.

space ex -> space sex? It's literally one consonant sound away, not a "stretch" in any dialect of English.

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but literally don't understand how someone would get from "space ex" to "space sex" unless they are intentionally trying to stretch/double the consonant.

To be clear, I'm willing to agree that it's a funny mispronunciation, but am unwilling to accept that this particular naming was an intentional juvenile joke by Musk. It's widely known he's a fan of the letter X, and I believe that fully explains "SpaceX".

Wait - it’s intentionally meant to sound like “space sex” right? I mean, it’s not 1:1 but it’s very close. Say it out loud 10 times.

But maybe possible it’s just all about the letter X for him?

Also, to clarify, I don’t dislike the guy. Nor do I dislike his naming. Just pointing out what I thought was the obvious.

Unless there's something I'm missing, he has a long history with being obsessed with naming things "X". Maybe it's a thing he thought about tongue in cheek, but I kind of doubt it's as intentional as folks in this thread are making it out to be.

fwiw, I don't like Elon and I think this whole thread is kinda distracting to actual points about Elon that don't need Olympic size hurdles to understand.

Fair enough. I didn’t know the X history. Twitter rename makes more sense now.

Lots of totally different and distinguishable words are one consonant sound away from each other.

“hi” is one consonant sound away from “bye”, but nobody confuses the two words.

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