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by cease 2832 days ago
Isis was an Egyptian goddess before her name got coopted by a terrorist group.
3 comments

My brother adopted a dog a few years back named Isis (after the Egyptian god). Even though Isis now had a very different connotation, they felt bad to change the dog's name. They recently adopted another dog which I jokingly recommended they name Al Qaeda.
I didn't know the name "Isis" had actually seen its popularity affected that much in the US? It still feels like a beautiful classical name to me, but then we never used the English name "ISIS" for the organisation, here in France.

It's a shame that the multimillenial name of an ancient god could be ruined for some people by an organization that lasted less than a decade, I hope this effect doesn't last.

"Al Qaeda" can be translated as "The Foundation", and there is apparently some discussion about Bin Laden being an Asimov fan and basing the name of his organisation on the Foundation Series. Also, I am reliably informed that wiping your Al Qaeda has apparently become slang in some places.
My friend has a 10 year old daughter named Isis.
It's not like the terrorist group choose that name. They choose to call themselves Daesh. ISIS was a term coined by Western miliary and/or media.
The actual name is ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah, "Islamic State". The Arabic acronym Daesh ("D.S.") is considered derogatory by IS itself.
Anyone remember the NFC mobile payments platform from 2011 that was called Isis Wallet?

It was a pretty big deal (huge backing by carriers, phone manufacturers, and credit card companies). They changed the name to Softcard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcard