WordSafety: Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

I think this is a great idea for people for people wanting to respect other&#x27;s sensitivity.<p>However, I also think that it is even more important for people to respect other languages&#x2F;cultures by not attributing their own independent negative connotations.<p>For example when it comes to naming a project, a Swede shouldn&#x27;t get offended by an English-speaker using &quot;fan&quot; (Swedish swear for devil), and an English speaker shouldn&#x27;t get offended by a Swede using &quot;slut&quot; (Swedish root for stop&#x2F;end).<p>Maybe I&#x27;m wrong, but this is a neat service nonetheless.

Funny seeing this site here again!<p>I made WordSafety five years ago as a two-night quickie side project:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10117297" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10117297</a><p>It is sadly neglected by me since then. Fortunately the code is extremely simple so it just runs with zero maintenance.<p>Actually I&#x27;d love to hand this site over to someone who would take better care of it than me. If that&#x27;s you, drop me an email or Twitter DM (details in my HN bio).

Apparently &quot;G8&quot; when pronounced in Chinese sounds like slang for &quot;penis&quot;. [0] Canon had a popular line of cameras named G1&#x2F;G2 etc - they skipped from G7 to G9. [1] HP also had servers with model names and generations that were also abbreviated as Gx, so HP ProLiant DL380p G7. They changed their naming convention to Genx when the 8th generation came up, so Gen8 instead of G8.<p>(Fun side story - apparently HP names their servers this way for government procurement contracts. So the contract can be written specifying a &quot;HP DL380p server&quot; and HP can supply whatever the latest generation is. Even if it shares nothing in common with the previous generation other than a name.)<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mandarin_Chinese_profanity#Penis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mandarin_Chinese_profanity#Pen...</a> [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dpreview.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;thread&#x2F;2448027" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dpreview.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;thread&#x2F;2448027</a> [2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;up2v.nl&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;10&#x2F;wonder-why-hp-did-use-gen8-instead-of-g8-for-its-8th-generation-of-servers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;up2v.nl&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;10&#x2F;wonder-why-hp-did-use-gen8-instead...</a>

Although I&#x27;ve been recommending WordSafety tool for quite a while now[1] for &#x27;cultural-linguistic check&#x27; when naming a startup&#x2F;product, we need to consider other factors as well like current events.<p>Of course, it wouldn&#x27;t be wise to name our product &#x27;Corona&#x27; now(probably ever?); Let me give you another epidemic related example -<p>&quot;Tata Motors, an automobile company which owns Jaguar, Land Rover were about to release their much anticipated car in 2016 called ‘Zica’ just when Zika virus epidemic struck the world; Tata motors promptly rebranded their car to Tiago before release.&quot; [2]<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startuptoolchain.com&#x2F;#incorporation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startuptoolchain.com&#x2F;#incorporation</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitstartup.com&#x2F;how-to-name-our-startup&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitstartup.com&#x2F;how-to-name-our-startup&#x2F;</a>

I can swear in 4 languages and it was all missing. And there is no option to submit a pull request.<p>This would work much beetter as open source project.

One of my favorite example of this kind of oversight is the audi &quot;e-tron&quot; : in french, an &quot;étron&quot; is literally a turd... (it seems that this website doesn&#x27;t catch it yet though)

This site, as with so many that work on this problem, totally fails at American slang (basically anything from twitch chat). This is what one of my former jobs called the middle schooler test.<p>Find a colleague with a 12 year old, and give them a folder with the name in big letters on the front to leave on the kitchen table. You&#x27;ll find out the next day if the name&#x27;s safe.

This is probably most useful for people who speak English as a second language trying to name something in English because it&#x27;s de facto our current lingua franca and gets called <i>globish</i> for that reason.<p>I&#x27;ve given people on HN feedback a few times about how &quot;that doesn&#x27;t mean what you think it means and sounds to me like a terrible name for this project and here&#x27;s why.&quot; A website checking for things like this is maybe a reasonable first step for some people, but if you aren&#x27;t somewhat fluent in the culture and language of your primary target audience, a website like this is likely insufficient. You should get some &quot;live&quot; feedback as well if you aren&#x27;t sure, preferably from someone like me who is prone to being <i>too truthful to be good.</i> People with better &quot;manners&quot; may not tell you honestly &quot;Ha! That sounds like (offensive as all hell phrase) to me!&quot;

Good one. I will always remember the name of the then US first lady. Laura Bush. Laura in my native language means Penis.

How does this work with words or phrases that have two different meanings in different languages, offensive in one but a common phrase or something in another?<p>A friend of mine from the Philippines speaks Cebuano and Olango, two different visaya dialects, they can mostly understand eachother, but there&#x27;s phrases or words in each dialect that translates to offensive things in the other dialect, apparently this is a common source of confusion between speakers of only one of the two languages with a speaker of the opposite dialect.

I put in my favorite poorly conceived product name: chocolate stool<p>It warned me that it contained the words &#x27;ho&#x27; and &#x27;chola&#x27;. Not really the result I expected.

A somewhat funny story happened at a company I used to work.<p>Due to legal concerns, a product had to be renamed and the sales and marketing team spent weeks looking for a new name.<p>Those teams were basically entirely native English speakers in a non English speaking country. Despite having lived there for a few years, none of them had more than a basic proficiency in the local language.<p>Anyway, they sent a company wide email, proudly announcing the new name, and asking if anyone saw any issue with it. It happened to be a pretty embarrassing word in the local language, which everyone had on their mind, but no one dared say anything, until the big mouth in the company just sent the item in question as a picture to every one in the company.<p>A different name was promptly announced.

No results for git[1], although I suppose English may not be considered a foreign language.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.merriam-webster.com&#x2F;dictionary&#x2F;git" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.merriam-webster.com&#x2F;dictionary&#x2F;git</a>

Doesn&#x27;t look like it covers 那个 (pronounced nah-gu in Mandarin). I had a black friend in college who told me about how deeply offended he was when he heard his Chinese girlfriend&#x27;s parents saying this over &amp; over...

One of my favorites: syntax (english) -&gt; sintaxis (spanish) -&gt; sin taxis (english)<p>I think most of these are occasionally amusing but not problematic. I&#x27;ve been living in Miami and I find that different words in different languages sharing the same spelling are as irrelevant as word meanings changing by adding only one letter. If I were to reply when someone said &quot;Do you like my hat?&quot; with &quot;Hmm, I dunno, if I add an e to that it will spell &#x27;hate&#x27;&quot;, that would be ridiculous and annoying. Similar with interpreting one language as another.

Check these comments from the earlier post from 2015: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10117297" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10117297</a>

This is potentially dangerous, as it gives a false sense of security. It appears to completely ignore slang. I just plugged in &quot;slapper&quot; and got a green light, for instance. I notice they have a cautionary note on the site, so...?<p>My favourite story about this sort of thing relates to a computer game which was very popular in its home territory (the UK) but struggled when released abroad (Germany, I think?) as its name was a slang term for &quot;rent boy&quot;. IIRC this was the game &quot;Midwinter&quot;.

Nice service, it&#x27;s would be pertty useful when it can identify this kind of issues before it&#x27;s too late.<p>One of the most used word in Mandarin is &#x27;那个&#x27; which means &#x27;that&#x27; and &#x27;Um...&#x27;, and it sounds like the N-word.<p>Another frequently used word is &#x27;会&#x27;, which means both &#x27;is able to&#x27; or &#x27;is going to&#x27;, and it sounds like &#x27;хуй&#x27; which means penis. I heard some Russian chuckles when we say this word, though I found that funny too when I realized.

This is a cool idea, just needs a bit of tweaking.<p>For example, &#x27;bubs&#x27; is flagged as a partial match of &#x27;boob&#x27;. &#x27;bewbs&#x27; finds no such match and is deemed safe.

Nice idea. But doesn&#x27;t seem very robust.<p>I searched for &quot;fallus&quot; and it gave me a nonsensical answer instead of the &quot;phallus&quot; that I expected.

It worked quite well on &quot;Kurve&quot; (German for &quot;curve&quot;). Made us chuckle as youths coming from Poland.<p>However the problem often is that you don&#x27;t know which word to look up in the first place. The possibility to paste a whole text and have it look for &quot;problematic words&quot; would be more useful.

Wix.com has this problem in Germany, I think they handled it rather gracefully: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IddnMutPgTI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IddnMutPgTI</a><p>IMHO A society that can handle sensitivities with good hearted humor is more robust and inclusive than other alternatives.

I was recently involved in an unwanted meaning issue where my app icon looked like &quot;SB&quot;, which I learned is offensive to some Chinese speakers. Too bad it doesn&#x27;t come up in wordsafety.com. Not that I&#x27;d have thought to look…

OK, let&#x27;s try this:<p><i>mokkori</i> -&gt; safe!<p>Uh... hmm... <i>mukkuri</i> -&gt; danger!<p>Matched &quot;kur,&quot; which according to the site is &quot;Russian: penis (Bulgarian).&quot; Not sure if the site is claiming that it&#x27;s the Russian word for Bulgarian penis or what.

How about Numbers? Did’nt Apple have a low sales rate of the Performa 4400 in Japan due to 4 having a bad meaning?<p><i>Four is an unlucky number in Japan because it sounds like shi (死 – death). This is why there are two readings for the number four, shi and yon. Whenever possible, people try to avoid using the deathy one.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lingualift.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;lucky-unlucky-numbers-japan&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lingualift.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;lucky-unlucky-numbers-japan&#x2F;</a>

Not as good as Google... At least as regards Hungarian (e.g. fasz). Google is generally okay for this, so not sure I understand the selling point.

Did a few attempts using slang of European languages. Lacks words that are widely understood by the general population and have bad meanings.

Note that HTML is not escaped correctly. I don&#x27;t think this can lead to XSS because &lt;&gt; is removed and the word is not echoed inside any tag attribute, but escaping &amp;, &#x27;, and &quot; might be something to fix regardless.<p>Obligatory snowman: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dro.pm&#x2F;a.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dro.pm&#x2F;a.png</a>

Who else immediately plugged in &quot;nova&quot;?

The best names, of course, do tend to evoke complex emotions. &#x27;Virgin&#x27;, and &#x27;Plan B&#x27; are the classic example in the branding industry.<p>CockroachDB is my favorite in tech, and also my favorite example of how tech people and their faux rationality are useless for tasks involving creativity and imagination.

I put in “Nova” first since that’s the best instance of this problem I know, only to learn that it’s an urban legend!

This reminds me of an incident from my teen years. I was at a party that had a bunch of German exchange students, and at one point we found them laughing around a bottle of Sierra Mist (Pepsi&#x27;s Sprite-alike). Turns out &quot;mist&quot; doesn&#x27;t sound very refreshing in German :)

Great idea! However the list is not yet complete, so not to be trusted completely. The words “Gus&#x2F;Guz” and “Zadnik” have negative meanings in Bulgarian, but don’t seem to show. If you enable crowdsourced additions to the dictionary, you may complete the list fairly quickly.

I’m not sure what it’s referring to when it says ‘Malay’ (that could mean a few different things) but it’s definitely missing some Malay words.<p>Edit: I think it’s referring to Malaysian&#x2F;Malayu but it doesn’t pick up a lot of the Malaysian cuss words that I tested on it (like the F word...)

Great idea. I’ve heard 2 funny examples of this from Spanish friends.<p>Apparently ford released a car in Spain a while back that sounded like ‘wanker’ in Spanish. Something like Panjero - maybe someone else can remember precisely.<p>And also Nescafe sounds a lot like No es Cafe (not coffee)

Darn, my current project starts with &quot;ass&quot; in bengali and &quot;butt&quot; in German<p>oh well

Failed to identify the Italian word &#x27;scopa&#x27; - which means &#x27;broom&#x27;, but also something very NSFW.<p>It did recognize &#x27;Sega&#x27; as an Italian term for a bout of self-abuse. However, that ship sailed a long time ago.

I really feel like Mitsubishi should have checked here before releasing the Pajero

Gives a lot of false positives for words that don&#x27;t match at all.<p>&quot;aka&quot; -&gt; cha no.

&gt;“Arshole”<p>1 Result:<p>&gt;“ho”, English: prostitute.<p>&gt;Match inside word, may not be a problem.<p>Cool, I’ll go with that for my next website.

I typed in a former internal codename from my employer that I know was replaced because of an obvious unfortunate meaning in Chinese, and WordSafety said nothing.

Doesn&#x27;t seem to pick up on &quot;Cognos&quot; being similar to &quot;coño&quot;, but it did pick up on the famous example of the &quot;Ascona&quot; car.

I think this tool only working for popular languages like european and some asian languages. None of the middle eastern languages are checked at all.

Phew, I can be safe knowing that my lifestyle brand “smelly toilet mess Isis untrustworthy company” does not have any negative meaning in English.

Don&#x27;t do the French cheers &quot;chin chin&quot; in Japan... You&#x27;ll get some laughs.<p>The site gets it right. Also kiss in Arabic is quite bad

Sadly no Easter egg for &quot;bitenuker&quot; (bêteneuker)<p>Caused GE to lose the European market for their pocket microwave back in 2009.

I think it’s crowd sourced answers with our help. Looked up a common one and it wasn’t there. Added it to help, of course

Looks to be missing quite a lot of offensive content from the searches I tried, things that bit me in the past.

Mongodb comes to mind. &quot;mongo&quot; is a slur in german for handicapped (mostly down syndrome) people.

Doesn&#x27;t work for Thai at all. I tried the top 10 offensive words and their most common Romanizations.

I just typed Sex and it said it’s fine... I don’t think the site is very good

Interesting &quot;china&quot; is flagged but &quot;pen island&quot; is not

&quot;Knull is coming&quot;

&#x27;sweat&#x27; remains a popular drinks brand despite such concerns.

Didn&#x27;t work when adding a space between syllables.

Peace among worlds!

It supports Hindi words as well. Great stuff.

too nad it doesn&#x27;t do phonetics. it could catch<p>hank ewlay<p>shu pameyla<p>and funnily Felicity Shagwell is only flagged for &#x27;lik&#x27;

Great service. Interesting finds.<p>hacker<p>“kher” Russian: dick

Always check for unwanted anagrams, too.<p>Hacker News = Wankers Ech, Whack Sneer, Cranks Whee, Shaken Crew, Neck Washer, Wench Rakes, Eschew Rank, Hawk Screen, Swank Cheer, Her New Sack, He Necks War, Answer Heck, Warns Cheek, Ashen Wreck ...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;new.wordsmith.org&#x2F;anagram&#x2F;anagram.cgi?anagram=hacker+news&amp;language=english-obscure&amp;t=0&amp;d=&amp;include=&amp;exclude=&amp;n=&amp;m=&amp;a=n&amp;l=n&amp;q=n&amp;k=1&amp;source=adv" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;new.wordsmith.org&#x2F;anagram&#x2F;anagram.cgi?anagram=hacker...</a>