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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

That... is an unfortunate name. I would really encourage people to google a word before choosing it as a product name.

I'm from the Netherlands and Googling "munt" returns nothing strange.

Reminds me of a colleague who named his new technology "spics" (it easy to pronounce and as an acronym is fitted perfectly)... Only after some weeks he googled it. It's changed now needless to say.

Munted also means getting incredibly and unxonrroballu high on drugs in Aussie slang.

Perhaps Minted if you want to keep the name similar?

Indeed, imagine the horror all the English speakers have when the come to Netherlands and are offered verse munt thee!

How silly those Dutch are for inventing a word before English existed, and then continuing to use it today even when apparently a sliver of the English speakers of the world think it means something bad.

Well, if it's being marketed to an English speaking audience, they will need to consider whether the name has negative connotations regardless of where it originated.

American companies have to be sensitive to this when expanding into new markets too.

Although, occasionally, they make mistakes. Coca-cola tried to sell water with a campaign that declared it 'bottled spunk', in the early 00's. Spunk, in english english, means semen.

That's the problem. If you look broadly enough, you will find someone who is offended by some of your words. You will never get everyone to agree on what is "ok".

"munt" is the Dutch word for coin.

But it's derogatory in English

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/munt

Probably unnecessary nitpick, but here goes: the actual derogatory term is "Munter" rather than just simply the word "Munt".

For example, I saw [INSERT NAME HERE] and they were looking like a total Munter. when it is used in a derogatory sense I think it is more often used when talking about [INSERT APPROPRIATE PRONOUN FOR PERSON WITH VAGINA HERE], but as far as I'm aware it can be applied to both/all/neither/X sexes/genders/species.

ETA: This is my second edit because apparently I don't understand how HN works after all this time. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

A munter is also someone who takes drugs, it comes from the context of taking pills at clubs - a munter munting gets munted.

Weird, it seems I can reply to you directly. Does anyone know why the "reply" button wasn't instantly available to me?

Here is my response again in case you are getting notifications and don't see my edited reply:

"I can't seem to reply to the reply to this reply, but I think when someone takes too many drugs they are classically known as being "Munted"."

HN hides the reply button for a little while to prevent flame wars.

You can reply without waiting by clicking “x minutes ago” on the comment.

^ This. Here, have an Internet hug: {huggle}.

This is going to save me literally seconds over the course of my lifetime, and as one with absolutely no patience with how slow computers are this is the best thing I've learnt this week.

This is also coming across as a really sarcastic reply, but it's really, genuinely not and I am very grateful that you pointed this out. Again, see hugs above.

You are welcome, happy to help :)

Interesting, I always equated pills with "munted" but those other permutations always meant something very different. Maybe it's a regional thing in the UK?

Wiktionary says that munter and munted are from New Zealand, which I'm not sure about but could give it a regional spread - it's been common here in London for nearly two decades, but we have quite a few Anzacs here!

Meanwhile “å være munter” in Norwegian means “to be cheerful”.

Lovely

>> the actual derogatory term is

No, the Oxford dictionary definition for the product's name as cited is correct in the regions it says it is. The existence of other, similar derogatory terms in other regions is secondary, if anything.

Fair enough. My apologies, when I looked at the link I didn't notice it was for a particular region and not the UK.

You are absolutely correct.

Unfortunately common things in one language often mean other things in another language. The author is clearly trying to share this with the English speaking world, (the site is English after all), so it stands to reason that you would choose your words carefully in English.

If you survey Americans, I think you would find a very small percentage who had ever heard the word "munt".

Or Zune, even now.

That is more difficult than it may appear.

Sometimes you need people that are pretty immersed in a culture to know about these things and avoid shooting yourself in the foot.

Hyundai, for example, almost made the mistake of releasing a vehicle named Kona in Portugal.

Kona is a pretty harmless word in most contexts, but "kona" reads exactly like "cona" for a Portuguese speaker, and "cona" is slag for "vagina".

Oops.

They renamed it Kauai for the Portuguese market, IIRC.

There’s also the Ford Pinto. In Brazilian (!) Portuguese, “pinto” is close to the male equivalent of “cona”.

In the general case, yes. But googling for Munt will tell you that it's not really a suitable name for a product.

Interesting, so since it is/was used primarily in South Africa and Afrikaans has its roots in Dutch I'd guess that's actually the root of the derogatory use as well. As in "people traded with coin".

Not only used in South Africa, but I had a similar thought as well.

I'm aware of that yes, really unfortunate . Thanks for the feedback.

I know it as the portmanteau...

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