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TL;DR: enumerating badness doesn't work, and they're Holding It Wrong. Right. "If everyone would just bend over backwards, my current self-inflicted problem wo

TL;DR: enumerating badness doesn't work, and they're Holding It Wrong. Right. "If everyone would just bend over backwards, my current self-inflicted problem would be solved." Now go and tell your thing to all those towns east of 14E named "Horny $X". Never mind that the names are correct, that it means "Upper $X": there's an entitled programmer on HN whose naive filter doesn't match reality - so of course the solution is to bend reality to these arbitrary demands: GET TO WORK LAZY SLOBS! (After you're done, there's even more travel for you: https://mashable.com/2016/11/22/world-map-rude-place-names/?europe=true https://mashable.com/2016/11/22/world-map-rude-place-names/?... . Be warned though: residents of Fucking, Innviertel, Austria have had it up to here with all those English and Merkins being righteously offended about a name that's completely innocuous in the local language.)

Theodores 8y ago
My point was more to do with thinking differently, not knee-jerk reacting to some click bait about rude town names. We all know of the 'Scunthorpe Problem' (at least on HN) but nobody cares to then think why Scunthorpe is called Scunthorpe. Even the Wikipedia page on the 'Scunthorpe Problem' doesn't link to the other Wikipedia page on Scunthorpe that divulges the etymology of the name. Had the people there not changed their town's name then they would have been fine. None of the Anglo-Saxon four letter words are new, they could have avoided the problem people have with the town name. Before the internet there was witty graffiti to be found in places such as public conveniences. Graffiti wasn't just inane tags in those days, people had something to say, including 'who put the [redacted] in Scunthorpe?', a 'quote' I remembered because it was funny. So the 'problem' is not a new one, it has been around for a long time, pre-dating the internet and iphones by many, many decades. Clearly there is more to the etymology than what was handed down with the Domesday Book, there is centuries of language evolution plus the pride a town has in its name. So there is no trite 'holding it wrong' point here and there certainly isn't any egotistical programmer telling the world to name their towns in American English friendly unicode, with all humour and culture removed. Just a not-mentioned point on how Scunthorpe used to be spelt differently, and, had this original spelling stayed the course then the town would not be the poster child for badly named towns.
- samnardoni 8y ago
  Maybe there’s a reason this is a “not-mentioned” point.

Theodores 8y ago

My point was more to do with thinking differently, not knee-jerk reacting to some click bait about rude town names. We all know of the 'Scunthorpe Problem' (at least on HN) but nobody cares to then think why Scunthorpe is called Scunthorpe. Even the Wikipedia page on the 'Scunthorpe Problem' doesn't link to the other Wikipedia page on Scunthorpe that divulges the etymology of the name. Had the people there not changed their town's name then they would have been fine. None of the Anglo-Saxon four letter words are new, they could have avoided the problem people have with the town name. Before the internet there was witty graffiti to be found in places such as public conveniences. Graffiti wasn't just inane tags in those days, people had something to say, including 'who put the [redacted] in Scunthorpe?', a 'quote' I remembered because it was funny. So the 'problem' is not a new one, it has been around for a long time, pre-dating the internet and iphones by many, many decades. Clearly there is more to the etymology than what was handed down with the Domesday Book, there is centuries of language evolution plus the pride a town has in its name. So there is no trite 'holding it wrong' point here and there certainly isn't any egotistical programmer telling the world to name their towns in American English friendly unicode, with all humour and culture removed. Just a not-mentioned point on how Scunthorpe used to be spelt differently, and, had this original spelling stayed the course then the town would not be the poster child for badly named towns.

samnardoni 8y ago
Maybe there’s a reason this is a “not-mentioned” point.