The name has an history, but the fact that UK (and US) have a problem with it is probably the very reason why it's been kept like this.
After all "bit" in french has exactly the same meaning as "cock" in english. french devs deal with it. I guess it's some kind or revenge...
We actually joke about it! Take a 'bitfield' for example, in french it becomes a 'field of cocks' :)
I'm pretty sure I remember hearing fairly direct word-of-mouth confirmation that the double meaning was completely deliberate.
It's not just that "Coq" might sound like "cock", but a "Coq blog" just sounds even funnier...
I just hate to think of the poor girl/woman who decides she loves the framework...
Why does it have to be a girl/woman? Why would it be any different for a boy/man to say they love Coq?
This actually happened to me. A classmate said something about Coq, and I did a double take. He explained it was a language, but for a second he got my hopes up.
I've been told that the French OCaml crowd have (or had) a habit of naming projects after animals. In this case, cockerel.
Coq means rooster (US or cock/cockerel in the UK) and is a symbol of France maybe this has something to do w/ it.
Also, after "Calculus of Constructions" being shortened to "CoC", and then punned with its inventor's name "Coquand".
In one of William Gibson's books (the first trilogy I believe), there was this idea of companies running algorithms on new product names to check if translated in other languages, the name would mean something NSFW. Just imagine how limiting that would be for marketing people, with so many existing human languages.
Maybe the UK should get familiar with the idea that they are not the center of the world?