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by teebrz 4683 days ago
Sure, it would be a poor name for a new soda you plan to market in Russian-speaking countries; but probably not really worth mentioning here. I'm sure you realize, but lots of Russian words/phrases sound funny (or obscene) in English too - this is true of every language and vice versa. Naming things is hard enough already without trying to cover what it might sound like in every major language.
1 comments

Kal means feces in Russian.

>Naming things is hard enough already without trying to cover what it might sound like in every major language.

IMO, when you give a name to internationally used thing, this should be taken care of. I.e. name shouldn't sound funny obscene in any of the major languages.

I think most Russian-speaking programmers are intelligent enough to understand it's a foreign name, especially since it's written as "kal" and not "кал".

> I.e. name shouldn't sound funny obscene in any of the major languages.

My point is that this is probably more difficult than you realize.

It's also pointless; if you're the maker of a consumer product (like a soda) and you expect to market it in Russian-speaking countries, then of course you need to watch out for such things. Something like this which is only incidentally used by a small portion of technically literate Russian speakers - it's not really worth bothering with.