Project names

Posted Apr 7, 2011 11:55 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (guest, #20463)
Parent article: TXLF: HeliOS helps schoolkids and challenges developers

Well, not everyone does speak english, and even if they do, they might not understand colloquial meanings of certain words.

"Kazehakase" clearly is a japanese word; I don't see anything wrong with a japanese speaker choosing something like this.

I actually associated "gimp" with the gimp from "Pulp Fiction", concluded from the "GNU Image Manipulation Program" that there was probably another meaning, maybe something along the german meaning of "gimpel" (Pyrrhula, a bird; also somebody not quite intelligent), and left it at that.

And there are many more. Also, of course, there are english words that sound (or are written) exactly the same as english words, but have a total different meaning. "Mist" for instance is exactly written and spelled the same in german -- only, in german it means "Manure"... Or "burro" in spanish ("donkey") versus italian ("butter")...

In the end, you can't actually avoid these problems. Ignore them. Name your project however you like. And probably "Gwibber" is better than "ZynAddSubFX" ;)

Project names

Posted Apr 8, 2011 8:36 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (1 responses)

> "Kazehakase" clearly is a japanese word

Oh... For whatever reason I thought it was from one of the Indian (the Native American Indian, I mean) languages.

> In the end, you can't actually avoid these problems. Ignore them.

Yup... We in Poland got used to OSRAM (the light bulb brand) even though it means something like German "Mist" but worse ;) The language centers in our brains can be quite flexible with interpreting words differently in different contexts.

Project names

Posted Apr 8, 2011 14:14 UTC (Fri) by aryonoco (guest, #55563) [Link]

I completely agree. And the best example of this in English-language countries has been the Nintendo Wii. I still remember when originally the name of the device, which was codenamed Nintendo Evolution, was released. Slashdot went up in flames, claiming that it was doomed to failure cause of the name. Similar story when the iPad was first announced. All the pad jokes died within 2 weeks, and everyone just associated a different meaning to the word in a different context.