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Comment by mentos | Hacker News Reader

Funny coincidence I was just wondering this a few weeks ago when reading a Tinder bio of a girl named Alexa who had something to the effect of 'heard all the Alexa jokes for a lifetime thanks'

Made me wonder if there is a class action lawsuit where all of the Alexa's could sue Amazon for psychological distress or something.

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I know an Alexa and she says the same. I'll admit I hadn't thought about it before but it does sound like an incredibly annoying thing to have dropped on you from on high: constant jokes, if anyone addresses you in an Amazon-enabled home all kind of crap gets triggered... I can see why people are infuriated by it.

It's like "Karen", but in this case the blame for misuse lies on a single company rather than a meme.

We shouldn't abuse people's names by using them for products, gross generalizations, etc. It's poor taste, and it frequently hurts people unintentionally.

Imagine your own name being used as a term for ridicule or poking fun. It's not a good feeling.

Thoughts go to all the Pete out there

I wonder if OJ ever got asked about his cousin Homer?

> We shouldn't abuse people's names by using them for products, gross generalizations, etc. It's poor taste, and it frequently hurts people unintentionally.

In the case of Alexa and Cortana, the intention is to treat the machine as a person you can talk to. It’s intentional that it has a human name.

Perhaps it's just my ignorance, but I was under the impression that Cortana was never really a name of a person, but adopted from the Halo franchise (now owned by Microsoft) as the name of the main character's AI companion, which sort of made the name up. If so, I think that makes it a little different.

I double-checked on Wikipedia for the disambiguation [1], but there doesn't seem to a subsection for a normal person-name of Cortana, as compared to the one for Alexa.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana_(disambiguation)

Should have just called it "Computer" like on Star Trek.

Or let you give it whatever name you like. It's your device, in theory.

IIRC, the word 'Alexa' and the configurable alternatives 'Echo', 'Amazon', and 'Computer' are encoded into the firmware of the device itself with a wide variety of different accents accepted. Using an arbitrary word would mean everything the device hears would need to be constantly sent to Amazon so their servers could detect your custom wake word or you'd need to train the device to use your custom wake word, which would never be as accent complete as the built in wake words. That might be fine if it's just you or if everyone in your household are willing to also go through a voice recognition training session with the device.

> Using an arbitrary word would mean everything the device hears would need to be constantly sent to Amazon

Isn't it pretty well accepted that is already happening? It's why I'll never have one of these things in my house. That and I don't like talking to machines (unless I'm cursing at them).

Nope.

Chad and Dick too

> Imagine your own name being used as a term for ridicule or poking fun.

You mean like "a John"? Or "Dick"? Or "a big Charlie"? These things are old as sin, stuff like this will probably exist forever. Forbid it as much as you want, it will always come back one way or another. Or is the problem that now they "trend female", whereas they historically trended male?

I have a pretty simple name, but because it was used in the title of a popular movie at one point, I've endured jokes about it all my life. What are we going to do, have all characters nameless in media? Of course not.

Sometimes the answer really is "grow a thicker skin". Either that or abandon the "tainted" name, like it happened to Adolph/Adolf.

I'm not calling for censorship. Growing a thicker skin is a virtue. But it'd be nice if the people promulgating the trend also stopped to think about it.

> You mean like "a John"? Or "Dick"? Or "a big Charlie"?

This has been the case for so long that parents have had ample time to stop naming their children this.

They recently renamed a nearby bridge in Georgia from "Dick Hunter Memorial Bridge" [1,2].

[1] http://ethunter1.blogspot.com/2006/03/hunter-bridge-part-2.h...

[2] https://thegate.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/...

> parents have had ample time to stop naming their children this.

I think it would be very depressing to abandon a glorious name like John just because a bunch of prostitutes use it as shorthand.

It’s a nickname for toilet, I think that’s the bigger issue. But I know lots of Johns all ages, it’s not going away.

With the right last name, Richard can be carried with pride. I’ve met a Steele and a Hardin, they were perfectly happy to have their last name included.

John is a biblical name. Not naming your kid that because it’s also occasionally used as slang, is pants-on-head stupid. There’s also nothing wrong with Charlie.

Dick/Richard is the only one here I agree with. That is extremely commonly used slang, so it makes sense.

The odd thing, is that every single Dick I've known, real name was actually Richard. People are weird.

My bother in law has one of those names which is is a "joke" and it doesn't seem to bother him in the least. My Sister OTOH, I don't think I actually knew his full name until I was attending their wedding.

> The odd thing, is that every single Dick I've known, real name was actually Richard.

Dick is short for Richard - like Bill and William, or Bob and Robert. It goes Richard -> Rick -> Dick.

Unless what you meant was every single unpleasant person you've known was named Richard.

NHL fans are familiar of course with Richard Pound who also publicly prefers “Dick”.

I was in a call with an Alexa on Zoom and every time anyone mentions her name, my Echo would be triggered. I had to go mute Echo for the entire duration.

People are like that. Ask a tall person if he's tired of people asking, "What's the weather like up there?"

My first name is associated with a catch phrase of a particular era, and I can judge how old someone is by their reaction to it.

You live with it. You move on with your life.

Wonder how Boomer Esiason is taking to “Hey Boomer”

Whatcha talking about, Willis?

Hehe ;)

For the first dozen or so years of my life, virtually every adult I met thought they were clever by referring to me as "Sam I am" (like from the Dr. Seuss book). Although thankfully that eventually waned, I still have a very intense dislike of that phrase.

I don't know, it feels like a different category when imposed from a company & overnight.

There was an "Austin Powers" at an old workplace. Imagine being that guy, with a perfectly normal if uncommon name until one day a trailer for a new comedy spy film comes out…

Obviously not much you can do about it with films, it's possible to happen, but I'd find that _much_ more annoying that getting tall jokes.

I'm colorblind and don't get offended by people asking "is this shirt red or green" when they find out. I started enjoying it once I had enough comeback lines to pick from.

That sounds like a really great way to handle it. Find and learn the best comebacks possibly and make everyone feel good about the situation while showing off your positive attitude and wit.

In the German speaking world the name Kevin is ruined, with some men having that name being avoided in the dating scene.

Why is Kevin ruined? Is that what Alexa is called in German?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevinism

I didn't know there was a word for that. Something similar has happened with some names in Latin America too.

People named Alexa should be given special privileges with the devices. I’m thinking muting but maybe the device should start apologizing and arranging free packages.

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