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Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very close to a default term for the category of the software. Open Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.

One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.

I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.

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I think they could've worked a little harder to at least find a noun you could futz with so it has some commonality between european languages. "Office" is probably well known, but it doesn't "feel" very european to use a noun that's different from most other EU languages translation. Could be "Productiv" or something. It feels like the federal government here in Canada has a team of language nerds ready to smash together a clever french-english name with two superimposed meanings when needed. ("O-Train", Ottawa Train, Au Train. "Via Rail". "Service Canada". "ArriveCAN". etc)

You can't tell me there isn't a few turbo-nerds somewhere in the entire continent of europe that will find the intersection of 6-7 languages to name an EU groupware suite.

Ireland is in EU. English is the primary language there (even though it is not the original language).

Also, English does work as a sort of Lingua Franca across EU countries.

Nothing wrong with it.

Correctamente:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English

I know, that's what I meant by "most other EU language translations". But to me at least, this is a brandable name. Why not do something "unifying" across many european languages, not just something that works in a singular one?

It's more of a plea for creativity rather than pragmatism... but I'm arguing for creativity from a government agency... so I might be a bit off base here haha

To be frank, any European language is a minority within the continent as a whole. English at least makes it marketable anywhere.

If I was the one to suggest a catchy name I would pick something in Latin or Greek.

Oficium has a nice ring to it.

Too bad ".um" TLD is tied to USA. ofici.um would be a sick URL/name.

Fair point! Yeah I guess I should sorta reframe my thinking as “something more creatively European”… It doesn’t have to be cross-lingual. (if that’s a word)

Oficium goes hard. I would absolutely push for that if I had any sort of involvement in this project.

bEUro

I already love it like, 10x more than "office.eu"

I love the proposal, although in my ears it sounds like a drunk German trying their best.

Euffice.

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