I once worked at a campus disability resource center and was encouraging the use of open source software. It was not comfortable pitching the GIMP as a Photosho

I once worked at a campus disability resource center and was encouraging the use of open source software. It was not comfortable pitching the GIMP as a Photoshop alternative. Luckily I don't think anyone felt personally attacked and it was understood to be an unfortunate coincidence. One person said, "I guess that's what people call me." which brought to the fore how even coincidental naming issues can remind people of something unpleasant. When it comes to Coq, I have a colleague that likes to emphasize the pun. It does turn some people off when they hear him going on about it. On the other hand, there is a lot of puritanical thinking in the US and maybe we should just become more comfortable with the notion that sexual organs, like mouths and elbows are part of the body. Then maybe my friend's "joke" wouldn't even make sense. It would be like "haha nose!" and people would shrug. But that isn't the world we live in and maybe the one we live in, where people find penises funny or offensive, is more fun. I don't know. I'm not really advocating renaming stuff or not. I see it as more of a dialog between the namers and the people who are bothered, at least with borderline cases like these. There are instances where names should be changed. Like there are ISO-639 codes that essentially use the equivalent of the N-word to refer to languages. That's really hurtful to minority communities that speak those languages. Names do have consequences. I guess it is just a question of whether people are ok with the consequences or not. And of course, you can't make everyone happy all the time.