[maccard]

Unfortunately common things in one language often mean other things in another language. The author is clearly trying to share this with the English speaking world, (the site is English after all), so it stands to reason that you would choose your words carefully in English.

[disconnected]

That is more difficult than it may appear.

Sometimes you need people that are pretty immersed in a culture to know about these things and avoid shooting yourself in the foot.

Hyundai, for example, almost made the mistake of releasing a vehicle named Kona in Portugal.

Kona is a pretty harmless word in most contexts, but "kona" reads exactly like "cona" for a Portuguese speaker, and "cona" is slag for "vagina".

Oops.

They renamed it Kauai for the Portuguese market, IIRC.

[maccard]

In the general case, yes. But googling for Munt will tell you that it's not really a suitable name for a product.

[klmr]

There’s also the Ford Pinto. In Brazilian (!) Portuguese, “pinto” is close to the male equivalent of “cona”.

[blunte]

If you survey Americans, I think you would find a very small percentage who had ever heard the word "munt".

[OrganicMSG]

Or Zune, even now.