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finnegandewitt | 5 years ago

Because it sounds like rape

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agustif|5 years ago

The problem with this kind of slippery-slope way into self-censorhip, is that similarities are (n) an almost infinite possibility in most languages. more so having in mind you're going from french to english.

Same way of thinking got GitHub to try and replace master, for something else like mercurial's main. Having master in the context nothing to do with slavery.

I get someone might be sensible to some words, but I don't see why someone else should keep a list of possible -not good- works declared and updated by the mob mafia of twitter and social media.

carrolldunham|5 years ago

Come on man. Are you really going to call your product Poup and say "b-but it's french for Doll". It's not a political thing it's just the way the word rings in current English is bad. Jokes have been being made about "rapier wit" etc. for 50 years.

hoseja|5 years ago

I don't think most people associate oil crops with physics engines.

Mirioron|5 years ago

Wow. Until this comment I couldn't see it. Isn't "rapier" (the sword) pronounced differently though?

leephillips|5 years ago

Don’t tell him about rapeseed.

nkozyra|5 years ago

Well he might know it better as canola oil, which is the "rebranding" it received for precisely the same reason. So I'm not certain that's the intended point.

jbay808|5 years ago

Some other words we could stop using for the same reason:

Rope, rap, rapper, crepe, paper, wrapper, rapid...

JabavuAdams|5 years ago

None of these are good examples. It's not the spelling. It's the pronunciation to native English speakers. "Rapey".

There's no point getting on a high horse about people being adults, etc. Marketing and advertising empirically work, and not because people are stupid. A lot of time and money is spent thinking up good names and trying to avoid names with embarassing connotations.

If a bunch of native English speakers are telling you that the name sounds bad to native English speakers, then it's worth at least considering rather than dismissing.

EDIT> Reminds me of Rational Rose .petal files.

cfcosta|5 years ago

Isn't rapier a french word, and pronounced as such?

kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago

French, yes. Pronounced according to academie rules, no.

finnegandewitt|5 years ago

Ok just to clear things up for the repliers, what I should’ve said was that the first part of this word being rape is unfortunate, but not a big deal. It’s fine as a name, but not what I would go with. Like how Uranus is a fine name, but not what I would name it if I was the official namer of planets.

mhh__|5 years ago

> Uranus

Ignoring that it's usually pronounced Uran-us rather than Ur-anus, really? I spend a lot of time around physicists and astrophysicists and I think you can probably guess how much of an issue this is (or for any adults)

mellow2020|5 years ago

Maybe to people who made "rapey" part of their vocabulary because of internet "humor".