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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Just curious what's behind the name... "ploopy"?

I mean, when a name manages to combine "plop" and "poopy" in a way that makes it really hard to think of anything but the toilet... it just makes me wonder why they chose that association?

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My first guess would have been that this is from a European company, which often have product names that don't sound quite right to a native English speaker [1], but cursory Googling [2] reveals that Ploopy Corporation appears to be run by a Colin Lam from Mississauga, Ontario, next to Toronto and not even in Quebec. So your guess is as good as mine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plopp

[2] https://www.bizapedia.com/canada/ploopy-corporation.html

I believe he's commented on reddit that he likes how it's a memorable, funny name.

Interesting. Although he really should have gone with a serious, enterprisey name like "Google" or "Tiktok".

The problem isn't that it's not serious. It's that it's actively a bit gross. When someone says Tiktok I think "huh, a funky spelling" not "is this something to do with poo?"

Obviously studied at the GIMP school of naming.

GIMP at least stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. You can see where the name came from.

This looks like nothing more than poor taste.

GIMP is clearly a backronym. They deliberately chose a crude name that might amuse 12 year olds and then contrived an acronym for it.

"Clearly"? It's no Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.

I like your sarcasm.

If you have kids, the name is from a popular series of tween books called diary of a wimpy kid.

Huh, interesting. It was also used in one of the Magic School Bus books (and maybe a corresponding episode, not sure), to describe the sound made by Carlos' invented musical instrument.

Where is it from if you don't?

haha, combined with the "no cheap shit" feature tagline, there's a funny trend here! ;)

To me it does a great job of saying "this is my fun side project that I do not want to become my day job". :)

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