The notoriety of Coq's name is, by a long, long way, the most embarrassing message board trope on HN. For years, you couldn't run a story about Coq --- a genuinely interesting and important piece of software --- on the front page without attracting sophomoric comments about a (bad) English transliteration? is that the word? of the name.
So like 4 years ago they renamed it, literally for this reason, which is embarrassing all on its own, and that's still not enough to get HN to stop talking about it.
I rarely do this, because the moderators really don't want anybody doing it, but I'll say out loud this time: I flagged this post. Just leave them alone.
smnrchrds 1 minutes ago [-]
As a non-anglophone myself, I hate the fact that we have given one language so much power to dictate how every other country and language should name things. You will never find an American company changing the name of their product in the US because it sounds naughty in French. Yet here we are, a group of francophones feeling pressure to change their product's name for anglophones' sake.
sillysaurusx 7 minutes ago [-]
Party pooper. We have so few opportunities to be silly on HN. Plus it’s good advertisement for what would otherwise be an obscure piece of software. You can’t deny it would be much less known.
I’m not saying it was a good idea, just an oddity. There was no need to curb stomp it with a public declaration of nuisance.
Oh well. Hey, thanks for the whiskey slap. I still think about it fondly.
ahartmetz 4 minutes ago [-]
It used to be that you could write Coq in Kant (KDE's Kate editor before it was renamed for... similar reasons - though much much earlier / quicker).
mcdonje 28 minutes ago [-]
While some may lament the departure of the phallus bird, nobody can be sad about the arrival of the giant fierce mythical bird.
nz 37 minutes ago [-]
It's good to see that they have chosen a name that has a much more obvious and less confusing spelling.
wk_end 34 minutes ago [-]
They made this change a couple of years back, didn’t they?
Thank goodness. It's been impossible to talk about Coq to people who don't already know what it is.
fooker 12 minutes ago [-]
Just in time for LEAN to have made it almost completely obsolete.
miningape 32 minutes ago [-]
I prefer the old name, it was much more memorable because it's funny.
"Yeah I'm playing with my Coq to try and get it working again"
hansvm 23 minutes ago [-]
standup> My coq experiments are promising, but it feels a little harder than it should be, and I'm worried it'll be too slow to deliver without some training and long practice sessions.
fargle 25 minutes ago [-]
why did they find the need to rename this? Am i missing something?
I wanted to include "only if you’re a woman" but the genital joke would be lost on some.
Anyway, they renamed it because it sounds like "cock" when pronounced.
LandR 12 minutes ago [-]
The name sounded like Cock.
p-e-w 9 minutes ago [-]
Because U.S. English is everything, and people want it that way, and any concern about cultural imperialism that would immediately be brought up in any other context magically doesn’t apply when Americans could possibly be offended. Everyone else has to adapt, no matter their mother tongue.
Meanwhile the world’s most common VCS’s name is literally an abuse (not a misspelling of one), but only outside the US so nobody cares.
booleandilemma 34 minutes ago [-]
Calling it rocq makes it seem harder.
yodon 35 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 01:11:20 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
So like 4 years ago they renamed it, literally for this reason, which is embarrassing all on its own, and that's still not enough to get HN to stop talking about it.
I rarely do this, because the moderators really don't want anybody doing it, but I'll say out loud this time: I flagged this post. Just leave them alone.
I’m not saying it was a good idea, just an oddity. There was no need to curb stomp it with a public declaration of nuisance.
Oh well. Hey, thanks for the whiskey slap. I still think about it fondly.
(35 points, 47 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38779480
(61 points, 64 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41180007
"Yeah I'm playing with my Coq to try and get it working again"
"Missed it by about 6 inches."
"Fowl play"
I wanted to include "only if you’re a woman" but the genital joke would be lost on some.
Anyway, they renamed it because it sounds like "cock" when pronounced.
Meanwhile the world’s most common VCS’s name is literally an abuse (not a misspelling of one), but only outside the US so nobody cares.