11 ms·
It’s a shame that an innocent French word for a French tool has to be renamed because of how it sounds to English speakers. It kinda reminds me of how kids teas
by 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
It’s a shame that an innocent French word for a French tool has to be renamed because of how it sounds to English speakers. It kinda reminds me of how kids tease someone with the surname Wang because of how it sounds in English.
But, the tool that originated in France is now a standard tool in a world where the lingua franca (pun intended) is English, and there’s no avoiding that in that environment it sounds like cock. There’s no choice here that isn’t somehow shitty, so it seems like they’re making the best decision.
- ModernMech 6y agoA shame, but I just can’t teach it in my programming languages class. I can’t stand up there in front of 200 students saying coq coq coq for an hour. I just can’t.
- fastball 6y agoCall it "coke"? Plenty of people mispronounce Latex. Not the end of the world, and easier than a name change.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoIsn’t that the same solution? Change the name because of how it sounds? I can’t see how that isn’t a name change. In fact, on the list of new proposals for a successor name, a few proposals are pronounced “coke.”
- fastball 6y agoPronunciation is in fact a different thing than changing a name. If someone mispronounces my name, it doesn't mean they've given me a new name. And people that want to pronounce it coq still can. Like how the correct pronunciation of LaTeX is "lay-tech", while obviously a lot of people pronounce it "latex".
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoIf someone decided to start intentionally pronouncing my name wrong from now on because they don’t like how it really sounds, I’d certainly feel like they were changing my name. Likewise for just changing the sound to “coke.” It’s a decision that the real sound sounds bad, with a suggestion to change it to a different sound. Same problem, same solution. If the maintainers decide to change the sound or the spelling, I’ll call it whatever they want. And I’ll be more comfortable presenting it at work if it doesn’t sound like I’m saying cock.
- Rule35 6y agoPeople (usually by their native language) can't all hear and pronounce all sounds equally well. If you can't reliably pronounce my name and it'll sound like a bad word when you try, then you should say what you can say safely. I don't care enough that I want you nervous or slowing down a meeting. But if you expect me to change my name to what you could say I would not. You trying your best is okay, you requiring me to lower the bar so you can succeed is not okay.
- riffic 6y agolike they'd never teach you how to make coq au vin in culinary school.
- zepto 6y agoCoq a l’ordinateur
- jcelerier 6y agoyet us french people have exactly zero problems with "bit" sounding the same than https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite#French https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite#French
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SilasX 6y agoHah! Yes, a while ago I came up with the "fan theory" that the French named Coq as revenge for exactly that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739666
- jcelerier 6y agothis, or it just comes from one of the original authors' name, Thierry Coquand ?
- Blaisorblade0 6y agoWe _know_ it doesn’t just come from Coquand’s name, because Gérard Huet very clearly said so.
- Yver 6y agoThat sounds like a you problem. Also, you could say "the language" for the oh-so-many times(?) you apparently have to have to refer to it during a programming class.
- ModernMech 6y agoNo because you know what happens? Students snicker and ask insincere questions just so they can say coq in class in front of their friends. They record their professor saying coq and splice it together and upload it to their social media feeds. Female students squirm in their seats and become disengaged, counting down the minutes until the class ends. It’s the same reason I can’t teach brainfuck. There are 10001 languages worthy of class time and these languages disqualify themselves in my opinion.
- Galanwe 6y agoHow old are your students? I'm truly amazed by what you're saying. As others mentioned, "bit" means "cock" in French, but by the time you learn what a bit is, you're old enough to not laugh at it anymore. And you surely get to use Coq in your studies when you're older than when you learn about bits. I mean, in France, laughing at your teacher because he speaks of "bits" (cocks) and you're >16yo would certainly make you look like mentally challenged.
- ModernMech 6y ago16 - 21. With 200 students in a room there are vast disparities in maturity levels.
- thu2111 6y agoWhy are you trying to teach 16 year olds theorem proving? They're are no situations in which that will ever be interesting or useful to them, so it's no surprise they would be bored and distracted.
- 6y ago
- dkarl 6y agoWhy not? That would be a great opportunity to model adult behavior for a bunch of teenagers.
- ModernMech 6y agoOn the best of days I can make the students remember one, maybe two important points from a given lecture. The second I say Coq in class, the takeaway from that lecture is that the professor said Coq, not anything having to do with theorem proving.
- dkarl 6y agoFor those kids, maybe that's a more important thing for them to learn? I mean, so many future encounters will be affected by their ability to not turn everything into crude sex jokes, compared to the number of circumstances where it will benefit anyone for them to know about theorem provers. Maybe that's a bit too touchy-feely, but from a more ruthless, "only the course material matters" perspective, fine, let the kids who can't get over the name suffer the consequences. The kids who take it in stride will have an advantage. Nothing wrong with that.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoIt doesn't just affect the immature kids, because the immature kids affect the rest.
- fastball 6y agoTo me, the non shitty choice is for people to stop acting like children and having a problem with a word, even if it does sound like cock.
- lallysingh 6y agoFighting human nature is rarely a winning strategy.
- Nicksil 6y agoIt's cultural, is it not?
- dkarl 6y agoI would not call it "human nature" or give up on changing it, but I agree that changing the name is a quick and easy win compared to changing the context.
- threatofrain 6y agoAnd what is the delineation between nature and culture?
- yepthatsreality 6y agoIf you view everything at a high level then there is no difference, but that doesn't mean we pretend that nature == culture.
- silicon2401 6y agoI think this is an XY problem. Presumably the goal of Coq is to solve some technical problems, not change human nature. There's nothing wrong with people having a sense of humor and finding things funny. It's a funny sound in English, just like there are probably English words that sound funny in French, and there are plenty of other words we can use instead of trying to enforce a humorless world where people can't have a giggle at a funny word
- tombert 6y agoThat's pretty much my take on it too. It's a bit unfair to the maintainers that their innocent name is sort of being co-opted by English, and for that matter it kind of sucks that English is the standard language for most scientific writing, but sadly that's just the way it is.
- m12k 6y agoThe same thing happened in reverse with the Toyota MR2, which in France was just called the Toyota MR, because "MR2" sounds like a swear word (merde) in French.
- anthk 6y agoAlso with Mitsubisi Pajero in Spain. "Pajero" is slang for wanker here.
- oblio 6y agoIf you think that's interesting you should see an even worse case that happened recently. During a Champions League football match a Romanian reserve referee was arguing with some folks from one of the teams playing. He wanted the most vocal to get a yellow card. There were multiple folks there, all dressed the same, similar builds. So, being slightly naive and maybe stupid, he told the Romanian main referee to book "the Black one", in Romanian. Black in Romanian is "negru". And it's not offensive (maybe a bit too colloquial for the setting), we have a ton of offensive words he could have used. Ironically, they wouldn't have understood any of the truly offensive words, I'm quite sure. Because a ton of the folks around being English speakers you can figure out how this ended. From a certain perspective you could say it's cultural imperialism.
- boobsbr 6y agoReminds me of people on Twitter being outraged because the color of an item was written on its packaging in multiple languages: Black Negro Nero Preto
- rapnie 6y agoSometimes they aren't renamed, like the Mitsubishi Pajero..
- craigsmansion 6y agoThe Pajero was renamed in a lot of Spanish speaking countries. Still, a lot of Spanish farmers drive one impervious to its slang meaning. This is probably because it actually does the thing they need it for, does it well, and they have better things to do.
- SilasX 6y agoI sometimes joke that "Coq" was French revenge for the Anglosphere making "bit" a common word in computer science, which sounds like the French equivalent of "cock". https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite Even without knowing French, you can kind of make out this part: « Bite » est une expression d'argot désignant vulgairement le pénis.
- dkarl 6y agoI had the same reaction, coming from the perspective of an adult doing paying work. If your engineers can't use a language called Coq without creating a hostile environment, you have a much bigger problem with how they behave around people named Wang, Dong, Mount, or Kuntz. You urgently need to fix that problem. But, on reading the discussion page, I realized I forgot about kids and students, especially women, and in that context, even though changing the name is obviously not the best or most important way to solve the problem, it could be a great mitigation and is worth doing.
- threatofrain 6y agoSo how should women and kids deal with Dr Dong? Would it make sense to metaphorically pull Dr Dong out and offer some friendly advice about changing their name, one with a better culture fit?
- dkarl 6y agoChildren will deal with it badly, of course. That's why it is a mitigation, not a solution. Unnecessarily creating opportunities for the problem to manifest will not result in the problem being solved more quickly; it will only increase the damage from it.
- cbfrench 6y agoOr, to use a personal example: My pediatrician was Dr. Raper. To my recollection, the rather infelicitous nature of his last name never came up in conversation among his patients, although I’m sure the oddity of it crossed some minds...
- umvi 6y ago> and there’s no avoiding that in that environment it sounds like cock Cock means "adult male bird" in English as well. See: cockfighting[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockfight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockfight
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoTrue, but of the last hundred times you came across the word cock, how many would you say we’re using that meaning? Probably close to zero for a lot of people coming across Coq. You know that meaning wouldn’t matter if you tried to name your new repo at work “cock” as in rooster.
- advicealligator 6y agoIt's a verb too, i.e. cocking a rifle, cocking your head. "Cocky" is also a commonly used adjective. It is an entirely benign word in most contexts.
- ofrzeta 6y agoCypress Hill: Cock the Hammer
- foobarbaz33 6y agoEven innocent English words and abbreviations are getting cancled. kill process is no longer OK. man pages are under fire. There's no way coq is escaping the word cancellation brigade.
- hehetrthrthrjn 6y agoI guess you don't find it embarrassing so you don't see the problem. You're probably in the category of people snickering at some young woman made to say "cock" publically and not in the category of people who are made to feel intensely uncomfortable by it. Names are arbitrary, why should anyone be so attached to this name, or any other name, idiom, or figure of speech that offends, embarrasses or diminishes others? Because historically we've been able to get away with it? If you don't care that's fine, but please don't sound so hard done by because people are thinking about how other people feel.
- luckylion 6y ago> You're probably in the category of people snickering at some young woman made to say "cock" publically and not in the category of people who are made to feel intensely uncomfortable by it. What a shitty comment.
- Rule35 6y ago> but please don't sound so hard done by because people are thinking about how other people feel. They aren't though. This isn't about the poor (theoretical) coq-sayer, this is about the righteousness of the name decriers. If you can't point to a real victim we're better off assuming there isn't one and that you're just trying to look hip. > any other name, idiom, or figure of speech that offends, embarrasses or diminishes others? Sure, if it did actually diminish people someone would take you seriously. If the product was named after a slur, actually referencing it, and rudely. Like "TheMick, a project to track alcoholism". But who is hurt by the concept that words in one language sound like different words in another? And is the speaker of the first language to blame or the speaker of the second who hears a dirty word? Allocate blame here, that we may smite the wicked. > I guess you don't find it embarrassing so you don't see the problem Even if I did I'd be hard pressed to tell some French people that they have to change because of my sexual puritanism. Is the left into forcing America's sexual mores on people again this week?
- goatcode 6y agoWe used to have a sense of humor, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Zucker_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Zucker_machine
- matbilodeau 6y agoRichard Holder and Michael Hunt would be so jealous
- craigsmansion 6y ago> in a world where the lingua franca (pun intended) is English That would be for computing in general. When it comes to proving software, France's academia seems to be one of the few that takes "making working software" as a serious development for the future (maybe because of airplanes and nuclear power plants). They're actually in the forefront here, if not leading. The correct response to "Coq sounds funny in English" should be: "Maybe just learn French?".
- ljm 6y agoIt comes across to me as quite puritanical. There's hardly a single word in existence that can't be turned into an innuendo, or sound the same as a rude or funny word in another language. If you want to reinforce the notion that cock can only mean penis, this is one hell of a way to do it! Meanwhile, cock is a common term of affection in Northern England ("Cheers, cock", although it might sound more like 'cyock') and also features in the name of countless pubs. It's one of those things that says more about the accusers.
- tasogare 6y ago> Maybe just learn French? Great response, bonus points for having that totally smug tone that could come from a Parisian that had a bad morning.
- ihojman 6y agoI don't think they are making a decision, rather being pushed to make a certain decision, that might not necessarily match their view. I aknowledge English as the lingua franca of our digital world, but that doesn't mean that we should be attached to every aspect of English speakers cultural environments, basically because we have our own environments too, and are just as valid as theirs.
- gnull 6y ago> [they are] being pushed to make a certain decision Is there any evidence of this? I can easily imagine authors making that decision voluntarily.
- tlringer 6y agoThe core team of Coq developers in France has mulled over this for years, but hasn't had enough momentum or interest to push for it. Right now the broader community of contributors and users, myself included, are arguing our points, suggesting name ideas, and attempting to drive some kind of consensus. My understanding is that the final decision will be democratic among users and contributors. Some are projecting weird politics onto this, but the conversation is otherwise proceeding quite civilly and constructively. Almost all dissenters in the thread (possibly all of them, I don't remember) do not work for Inria, the research institute at which Coq is professionally developed. Though they are community members like me (I am lightly in favor of the change, and I am both a contributor and a user).
- thefz 6y agoOn the other hand I am extremely tired of the US' continuous disregard of the existence of other cultures and languages. English might be the lingua franca but the US one is not the "cultura franca" of the whole world. I live in a place/culture where hearing Coq makes me think of the french word for male chicken and only marginally of an English swear word, and I am growing more and more exhausted with this kind of juvenile, sterile thinking.
- jonsterling 6y agoTo be clear, this name was chosen by the creator of Coq, Gerard Huet, with the intention of trolling. It wasn't an innocent French word.
- herbelin 6y agoThis is wrong. The name Coq is a reference to CoC (the Calculus of Constructions) and to Coquand (the inventor of the Calculus of Constructions). Incidentally, it is one of symbol of France. Its meaning in English provided an opportunity for Gérard Huet to troll with the name, but if the intent were to troll, there would have been many other possible names suitable for trolling, no need to choose Coq. And reciprocally, with many different names would have it been possible to troll, if your intent is to troll.
- tlringer 6y agoMy understanding was that it was the icing on the cake to Huet. I'm still not sure that changes much.
- version10 6y agoIs there a citation? The literature is upfront about the JMeq joke, by contrast I've never read anything about this topic. I'm neither English nor French. I've never seen anything else than a rooster in the name or the logo.
- herbelin 6y agoIn terms of multiplicity of meanings, certainly. Anyway, if you're interested in my personal opinion on Huet's "humour" and how this degenerated, we can talk privately.
- jonsterling 6y agoIn english at least, we call this a “double entendre” ;-) Obviously the very purpose of double entendres is to troll those who will get the second meaning. duh!
- 6y ago