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Comment by dmlorenzetti | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, they would use blanked keyword blocking. So sex education resources would frequently get blocked.

I had a colleague whose surname, Sextro, was part of his email address. He occasionally had messages blocked by blanket filters like that.

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Before HTTPS was all but required for everything, an intranet site would get blocked in one particular office at 11pm every night. We tracked it down to a night-shift employee signing in, whose last name contained "shit". After pleading fruitlessly against that office's IT policies we solved the problem permanently by eating the overhead and turning on HTTPS.

I once debugged an email delivery issue which turned out to be a similar filter which included email headers while scanning, ending up blocking any email that passed through an SMTP server called foo.sussex.bar.hp.com (or maybe it was Essex, my memory is hazy).

Praying for all the people who use the shortened form of Richard

The ultimate litmus test for such filtering.

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

And a favorite tech blog/news website that is often blocked:

https://torrentfreak.com/

or literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

The canonical joke is the complaint about substring censorship:

"There are three English football teams that always fall victim to overzealous censorship: Arsenal, Scunthorpe and Manchester Fucking United."

or.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_My_Dad_Says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$h*!_My_Dad_Says

The later (TV-Show) is actually based on the former (twitter feed) but couldn't retain the name in the US. It would probably have been perfectly fine as is in the UK.

> $h*!

I never understand that kind of (often self) censorship where the meaning is intentionally left clear. It could be malicious compliance with keyword-based filters but people do it voluntarily even in places where no such filters exist.

As a racing fan, Dick Trickle [0] (retired NASCAR driver) is also a fun name.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Trickle

Rich?

I believe they were referecing a bit more relevant to the discussion short version of "Richard", which is "Dick".

Interesting, TIL.

Bob is short for Robert, too by the way.

I make a point to mention that my cat’s full name is Robert. I enjoy the reactions: person either looks at me like I’m a moron for thinking this is something worth spending the energy to say out loud, or they really enjoy it. I digress.

Yeah, I did know that. However "Richard" and "Dick" are much more distant in some sense... I had no idea.

Totally, thanks for letting me use your comment to digress about Robert.

Richard is often shortened to Dick, e.g. as in "Tom, Dick, and Harry".

I know that Dick is another name for Richard. But Why? They don't seem to even be plays off of the same name, nor do they sound the same at all.

It's like if another name for John was Frank. It makes zero sense.

It likely originated in rhyming slang where words that rhyme are used as replacement[0]. It isn't the only example in nick names. Bill is a nickname for William and Bob is a nickname for Robert.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang

It comes from Middle English rhyming slang. Rick -> Dick; Rob -> Bob.

My wife's name is Aleksandra, but the short version of that is Ola. Similarly, Olek is a short for Aleksander. Also no idea why.

The O/A phonetic distinction in Russian and related languages is tricky, with some dialects making a distinction and some not (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_reduction_in_Russian and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akanye)

If someone would pronounce Alek and Olek the same, the chosen transcription of the shortened nickname is pretty much arbitrary.

> Olek is a short for Aleksander.

Very likely this is due to both being transliterations from Cyrillic.

This is correct.

Oleksander is Ukranian form of Aleksander.

Or the diminutive is Sasha. For reasons?

The nickname for John is Jack, actually. Jack and Dick both belong to a class of nicknames that all end in "ck" or "k" sounds, but for which the original doesn't have a k sound.

* Jack

* Dick

* Rock from Roland

* Hank from Henry

* Chuck from Charles

Wait till you find out about "Buffy".

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

Wait till you find out about "Tiffany"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LMr5XTgeyI (CGP Grey)

(spoiler: he couldn't find out where it came from, and did this video on his research to explain more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ )

The standard of counting as "Tiffany" is strange. He's not happy with Θεοφανώ or Theophania, but he's perfectly happy to count (French) Tiphaine, Thifaine, Thiephaine, and (English) Tephany as being "obviously" the modern name. But the difference between Tephany and Theophania is down to the "Th" at the beginning. Why agonize over the difference between the very well-attested Greek Theophania and modern Tiffany if it's so clear that medieval Tephany matches the modern form? It's a better match for the Greek form!

Did you know people often use Jack as a shorthand for John? JFK was often, famously, referred to as Jack Kennedy when he was alive...

See also Prince Harry (Duke of Sussex) who was christened Henry.

And of course he married a woman named Jacqueline.

Wait until you find out what Peggy, Betty, or Tina are short forms of.

Another name for John is Jack, though.

Try again.

Chard?

I wonder how such filters work in Sweden. We often see advertisement like "Sex gym i stan!". Meaning "Six gyms in town!".

Swedes aren’t quite so puritanical, as I think you know. In Swedish culture it’s apparently funny when small children make jokes about bajskorvar.

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