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Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

"The We Company": somebody didn't check what that sounds like when spoken in British English. Wait, what? A company that manufactures and or sells wee?!?? (Pee, to our American friends.) It's not as extreme as powergenitalia or expertsexchange but still something of a facepalm.

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> Pee, to our American friends

"Wee" also means "pee" in the US, as well as meaning "small".

Only in the context of being a Britishism that Americans occasionally use.

> Only

Nope. Never in my life heard of it being a britishism.

Edit: A downvote for proving an absolute statement wrong?

"Bloody" is used as a britishism. "Wee" is not, at least in many areas.

Not in the urine sense, but as in "a wee problem" it's got strong British (mostly Scots, really) overtones for me.

Yes, I've seen that use.

Have lived all over the US, "wee" is most definitely used.

As a Britishism? I didn't say it wasn't used at all.

When people use it, they probably won’t add “that was a britishism I just used”. You interpret that through... eh, cultural analysis.

I guess, if you squint just right -- but only in the same sense that it's true of most American English.

Those uses of "wee" (particularly the "urine" meaning) have been common in the US for far longer than I've been alive. Nobody thinks of them as "britishisms".

Nintendo got away with it...

I don't get it...

Nintendo Wii

I have looked at "expertsexchange" for years and never saw the humor there. Thanks for pointing out!

And don't forget ViaGrafix.com

Sounds like it's now a Weak Company.

It happens all the time. Apple's Siri means Ass in Japanese.

Or you can recall the snickering when the iPad was introduced. Didn't seem to have negatively affected it.

I brought this up with my Japanese friend. He told me there are so many homophones in the language people are desensitised to stuff like this. For example: シ (shi) can mean both 四 (four) and 死 (death).

You’re not wrong, but your choice of examples isn’t great. Four is actually associated with death because it sounds like death, four is unlucky[4]. There is also an alternative pronunciation for “four”, よん。

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

They presumably did think about what it sounded like. And they presumably also noticed that it worked for Nintendo.

It’s not commonly used that way, but does have the same meaning in American English as well.

Mitsubishi Pajero is even worse

The joke being that the name fits the drivers.

(By way of explanation, 'pajero' roughly means 'wanker' in Spanish)

Americans use "wee" too

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