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Comment by pazimzadeh | Hacker News Reader

> Oshima says he would even jokingly ask Jobs to name one of Apple's products 'Hiro.'

That's not a bad alternative to 'Siri'

Fun fact: In Japanese there is no "Si" sound and the closest is "Shi", so "Siri" is pronounced "Shiri". You know what else is pronounced "Shiri" in Japanese? Buttocks (尻).

Totally irrelevant, but a related fact in this vein: I recently learned "尻" via WaniKani (a popular SRS system to help learn kanji), and the mnemonic they used to help you remember the reading of this kanji/vocabulary (お尻) is now inspired on Apple's Siri:

https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/%E5%B0%BB

> Now that you have nine flags inside your butt, you have to get them out. But, you don't know how to. So you ask Siri (しり — shi-ri), "how do I get nine flags out of my butt?"

(Note: The kanji is composed of the radicals "nine" and "flag", which is how they get to "nine flags".)

(Note: WaniKani's mnemonics are very often somewhat non-sensical slightly entertaining stories in the same style as this one. Very normal.)

No: 尸, the radical of 尻 doesn't mean "flag" -- it means "corpse". Notice that many of the characters with the 尸 radical refer to defilement, excrement or death.

Wanikani's "radical" names often don't map directly to the actual meaning. They are just used for mnemonics. This happens most when the "radical" isn't a common/official character in Japanese on it's own right, like 尸.

I don't entirely agree with that system, so I often look up the individual radical meanings anyway and add a synonym, but that's Wanikani's method.

If you want to look at it that way, "Shiri" can also refer to 知り which is the noun form or the stem of the -masu form of the verb 知る ("Shiru") generally meaning to know.

Interesting! 'Shir' means lion in Farsi, 'sheer' means milk so Shiri would mean 'you're a lion'

If you use a hard r 'Siri' translates to "garlic-i" or "you're a garlic"

While it is probably unrelated coincidence, Steve Jobs was one of the largest Disney shareholders and they would have been early on the production of Big Hero 6—whose main character is named Hiro—when Jobs passed away.

In the mobile industry at the very beginning of the introduction of iPhone/android devices, we referred to “feature” phones (e.g Symbian), “smartphones” (e.g Android and windows phone)and “super phones” or “the hero device” which was exclusively the iPhone. I always thought Hero was an odd reference, but maybe there is a connection to Oshima’s request.

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