6 ms·

This is extremely neat but the name "gash" is... a poor choice. Gory in standard English, worse as a slang term

enriquto 6y ago
Why do you pronounce it like that, though? I pronounce it like "geesh" or "guish" or "guiche" (not sure how to write it phonetically). It is just the Catalan word for "chalk".
- burkaman 6y ago
  Not Guix, Gash: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash
  - benbristow 6y ago
    Gash is a slang term for the female sexual organ. Not a good name for a project.
    - gmanley 6y ago
      If we were to reserve every word that is also used as slang for sexual organs we'd be out a lot of words. Peach, purse, shaft, sheath, tool, pocket, etc, these are all slang as well, yet we still use these for their original meaning. It's all about context. I'd also say 'gash' is quite regional. I've only ever heard it used in the U.K.
      - lukego 6y ago
        Australia too. Quite vulgar but not especially common nor especially rare.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- icen 6y ago
  Not the name of the project (which is pronounced 'geeks') but the implementation of the shell and coreutils, as from the text in the article. This implementation is called 'Gash'.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    oook... yes, this is arguably a not-so-good name.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
paroneayea 6y ago
I don't think it's intended as that slang... I think it's probably in the scheme tradition of self-deprecating conspiratorial names... I suspect it's meant to invoke that theme. Not to mention that "bash" sounds like a concussive injury; "gash" sounds like a slicing injury. So follows that theme also. I would be very surprised if genitalia slang came up in the author's mind as a choice of names but I guess I don't know them.
- kazinator 6y ago
  I'm amazed how it can be possible not understand that what came up in the author's mind is not the issue at all, and irrelevant. According to your reasoning, I can name an alarm program "cock", just as long as what was going through my mind at the time was a rooster crowing in the morning. ("Get woken up by cock!") What anyone else chooses to read into it is their problem?
  - eeh 6y ago
    Is the author of the project a fluent speaker of English? Not everyone will be familiar with slangs in various countries.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    Well, there is Coq, the interactive theorem prover. I quite like the name (and the logo, which is a rooster.)
    - tom_mellior 6y ago
      Legend has it that Gérard Huet, who named Coq, enjoys double entendre and chose the name deliberately, just like he did with the Zipper data structure. So this might not be a great example of something that accidentally has a double meaning.
      - bitwize 6y ago
        Apparently some British researchers were working on a theorem prover named Bit, which in French sounds like "bitte" (slang for penis). So the French researchers who worked on Coq cheekily chose a French word with a double-entendre meaning in English. But all these anecdotes counteract what Wikipedia says, which is that Coq was named for one of its authors, Thierry Coquand, and for his "calculus of constructions" (CoC).
pronoiac 6y ago
"gsh" or "gush" would be as clear and less awkward to discuss.
- uncletaco 6y ago
  I wrote a toy shell using guile back in school and the jokes practically wrote themselves. I like gash though. Where bash is a bludgeoning shell gash is more of a cutting one, if we want to be cute about it.
jessaustin 6y ago
I'd thank you for not making HN a worse place by bikeshedding. You may not care about this project, but some people here do.
- bitwize 6y ago
  It's not bikeshedding. The open source community has opened its eyes to how poor a job of inclusivity it's done, and one of the changes that resulted was a social taboo against names and terminology that serve as microaggressions, including "master", "slave", "blacklist", "cop", and "gimp". Given the context in which "gash" is often used in ordinary language, it's reasonable to at least question its use as a project name.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    No reasonable person thinks "woman" when she encounters the word "gash". I'd wager there are fairly few unreasonable people who think that, but of course it only takes one to kick off a spriraling pointless bikeshedding thread. It's good that we've got this inanity flagged to the bottom, but when I commented it was at the top.
johnbcoughlin 6y ago
I would suggest "gnash" as a much more appealingly playful alternative
- alessivs 6y ago
  Already taken[1]. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
lazyjones 6y ago
It's amazing that in 2020 people still use relatively common English words to name their software. Apart from all the confusion (context needed to understand what is being meant) and issues such as those you mentioned, the projects will be hard to google, risk collisions with other projects, have domain and trademark conflicts etc. ... Just make up artificial words, concatenate several terms etc. people. Though in this particular case, conventions like "has to end with 'sh' because ... cargo cult" and "must be easy to type" probably played a role.

Why do you pronounce it like that, though? I pronounce it like "geesh" or "guish" or "guiche" (not sure how to write it phonetically). It is just the Catalan word for "chalk".

burkaman 6y ago
Not Guix, Gash: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash
- benbristow 6y ago
  Gash is a slang term for the female sexual organ. Not a good name for a project.
  - gmanley 6y ago
    If we were to reserve every word that is also used as slang for sexual organs we'd be out a lot of words. Peach, purse, shaft, sheath, tool, pocket, etc, these are all slang as well, yet we still use these for their original meaning. It's all about context. I'd also say 'gash' is quite regional. I've only ever heard it used in the U.K.
    - lukego 6y ago
      Australia too. Quite vulgar but not especially common nor especially rare.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
icen 6y ago
Not the name of the project (which is pronounced 'geeks') but the implementation of the shell and coreutils, as from the text in the article. This implementation is called 'Gash'.
- enriquto 6y ago
  oook... yes, this is arguably a not-so-good name.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

paroneayea 6y ago

I don't think it's intended as that slang... I think it's probably in the scheme tradition of self-deprecating conspiratorial names... I suspect it's meant to invoke that theme. Not to mention that "bash" sounds like a concussive injury; "gash" sounds like a slicing injury. So follows that theme also. I would be very surprised if genitalia slang came up in the author's mind as a choice of names but I guess I don't know them.

kazinator 6y ago
I'm amazed how it can be possible not understand that what came up in the author's mind is not the issue at all, and irrelevant. According to your reasoning, I can name an alarm program "cock", just as long as what was going through my mind at the time was a rooster crowing in the morning. ("Get woken up by cock!") What anyone else chooses to read into it is their problem?
- eeh 6y ago
  Is the author of the project a fluent speaker of English? Not everyone will be familiar with slangs in various countries.
- sterlind 6y ago
  Well, there is Coq, the interactive theorem prover. I quite like the name (and the logo, which is a rooster.)
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    Legend has it that Gérard Huet, who named Coq, enjoys double entendre and chose the name deliberately, just like he did with the Zipper data structure. So this might not be a great example of something that accidentally has a double meaning.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      Apparently some British researchers were working on a theorem prover named Bit, which in French sounds like "bitte" (slang for penis). So the French researchers who worked on Coq cheekily chose a French word with a double-entendre meaning in English. But all these anecdotes counteract what Wikipedia says, which is that Coq was named for one of its authors, Thierry Coquand, and for his "calculus of constructions" (CoC).

pronoiac 6y ago

"gsh" or "gush" would be as clear and less awkward to discuss.

uncletaco 6y ago
I wrote a toy shell using guile back in school and the jokes practically wrote themselves. I like gash though. Where bash is a bludgeoning shell gash is more of a cutting one, if we want to be cute about it.

jessaustin 6y ago

I'd thank you for not making HN a worse place by bikeshedding. You may not care about this project, but some people here do.

bitwize 6y ago
It's not bikeshedding. The open source community has opened its eyes to how poor a job of inclusivity it's done, and one of the changes that resulted was a social taboo against names and terminology that serve as microaggressions, including "master", "slave", "blacklist", "cop", and "gimp". Given the context in which "gash" is often used in ordinary language, it's reasonable to at least question its use as a project name.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  No reasonable person thinks "woman" when she encounters the word "gash". I'd wager there are fairly few unreasonable people who think that, but of course it only takes one to kick off a spriraling pointless bikeshedding thread. It's good that we've got this inanity flagged to the bottom, but when I commented it was at the top.

johnbcoughlin 6y ago

I would suggest "gnash" as a much more appealingly playful alternative

alessivs 6y ago
Already taken[1]. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

lazyjones 6y ago

It's amazing that in 2020 people still use relatively common English words to name their software. Apart from all the confusion (context needed to understand what is being meant) and issues such as those you mentioned, the projects will be hard to google, risk collisions with other projects, have domain and trademark conflicts etc. ... Just make up artificial words, concatenate several terms etc. people. Though in this particular case, conventions like "has to end with 'sh' because ... cargo cult" and "must be easy to type" probably played a role.