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Comment by lago | Hacker News Reader

rename: Crumble It's made of rust, it's physics-y: crumble.

I think 'rapier' is not a good name, for (I hope) obvious reasons.

> I think 'rapier' is not a good name, for (I hope) obvious reasons.

Fine I'll bite, why's it not a good name? I immediately thought of the type of sword and the thrusting action it implies - which feels apt in the context of physics engines... no?

This explains my initial impression of the name: Funnier, fluffier, fruitier, rapier.

Did you not think 'sword'? Why was your first impression a non-existent word rather than the real one that already exists?

Every word sounds like some other words. Most adults make peace with this situation. But this reminds me of the crisis that ocurred a few years ago in the Washington, DC city government when a councilmember used the word “niggardly” in a meeting and other semi-literate councilmembers had strokes and heart attacks. This actually became an issue that was talked about for months.

I'm not a native speaker, and searching on urban dictionary I could not find anything. What's the problem with the name?

I'm a native English speaker and I didn't get what their problem with it was either. I've never heard anyone voice such an objection to using the word outside of this thread. Bizarre reasoning imo.

Because it sounds like rape

The problem with this kind of slippery-slope way into self-censorhip, is that similarities are (n) an almost infinite possibility in most languages. more so having in mind you're going from french to english.

Same way of thinking got GitHub to try and replace master, for something else like mercurial's main. Having master in the context nothing to do with slavery.

I get someone might be sensible to some words, but I don't see why someone else should keep a list of possible -not good- works declared and updated by the mob mafia of twitter and social media.

Come on man. Are you really going to call your product Poup and say "b-but it's french for Doll". It's not a political thing it's just the way the word rings in current English is bad. Jokes have been being made about "rapier wit" etc. for 50 years.

No offense intended to you at all, but "the way the word rings in current English" seems super subjective. Personally, the notion of "rape" never even occurred to me when I heard this name.

Incidentally, unlike "rapier", words like "raptor" and "rapture" are directly related to the word "rape". These words can be clearly traced back to ancient Greek (meaning something like 'to seize violently'), and perhaps beyond.

Just my $0.02. :-)

I don't think most people associate oil crops with physics engines.

Wow. Until this comment I couldn't see it. Isn't "rapier" (the sword) pronounced differently though?

Don’t tell him about rapeseed.

Well he might know it better as canola oil, which is the "rebranding" it received for precisely the same reason. So I'm not certain that's the intended point.

> canola oil, which is the "rebranding" it received for precisely the same reason

Do you have a source? Wikipedia lists a different reason, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola_oil:

> The change in name serves to distinguish it from natural rapeseed oil, which has much higher erucic acid content.

(1) A seed was rebranded as an oil?

(2) Not really; the nomenclature and its history is more interesting than that.

(3) The seed is still called rapeseed.

(4) Why was that not the intended point?

1) the corresponding oil - which (unlike the seed) is actually commonly used/referenced thing in English - was

2) it played a role [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-10-12-890122...]

3) the sword is still called rapier

4) because it doesn't serve as a logical foil for aforementioned reasons. If anything it just shows a nice analogous response.

Oh give over that article says nothing about it being named Canola because of the word rapeseed containing the word rape. The earlier assumption about the naming of Canola oil is just incorrect.

Well logically it makes sense, branding things with "rape," which is not a commonly known name is not . And there are other articles that support it:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/22/canada-tisdale....

There obviously could have been myriad reasons. Also, Aldi ran into a similar issue with rape:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/25/aldi-forced-to-c...

Some other words we could stop using for the same reason:

Rope, rap, rapper, crepe, paper, wrapper, rapid...

None of these are good examples. It's not the spelling. It's the pronunciation to native English speakers. "Rapey".

There's no point getting on a high horse about people being adults, etc. Marketing and advertising empirically work, and not because people are stupid. A lot of time and money is spent thinking up good names and trying to avoid names with embarassing connotations.

If a bunch of native English speakers are telling you that the name sounds bad to native English speakers, then it's worth at least considering rather than dismissing.

EDIT> Reminds me of Rational Rose .petal files.

As a native English speaker I can attest that we sure as shit don't pronounce it "Rapey".

Consider the argument: "Tastier" doesn't bring to mind any associations with "Tasty" because we don't pronounce "Tastier" as "Tasty". Bad argument, right?

Also, why am I wasting time responding? But it is fascinating the extents to which people seem to almost purposefully misunderstand each other online. I sometimes like to explore the space I guess.

Isn't rapier a french word, and pronounced as such?

French, yes. Pronounced according to academie rules, no.

Ok just to clear things up for the repliers, what I should’ve said was that the first part of this word being rape is unfortunate, but not a big deal. It’s fine as a name, but not what I would go with. Like how Uranus is a fine name, but not what I would name it if I was the official namer of planets.

> Uranus

Ignoring that it's usually pronounced Uran-us rather than Ur-anus, really? I spend a lot of time around physicists and astrophysicists and I think you can probably guess how much of an issue this is (or for any adults)

Maybe to people who made "rapey" part of their vocabulary because of internet "humor".

Rapier is like the actual name of some people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier_(disambiguation)#People

That's true, but not that relevant. There are people with all kinds of last names, e.g.: https://www.boredpanda.com/people-with-dirty-last-names-prob... .

I think only in the same way that 'soccer' is not a good name for football, as a reference to domestic violence

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