Ask HN: Do certain words, like “Zen”, limit the reach for western audience?

1 point·moomoo11··4 comments

I am not a native westerner/Christian/Muslim, etc.

I am wondering if words like "Zen" are alienating for western audience. Do people think this is some kind of religious thing, or are they open to it?

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If you ask 100 average people on the street in a non-buddhist country, most of these won't know what Zen is.

Some of the people will have a fuzzy picture revolving around East Asia, monks and meditation. Only a very small fraction will have deeper knowledge about this topic like koans and zazen.

So depending on your target audience, using "Zen" for marketing might not be very useful, unless you're planning to play with the more common (but less accurate) connotations.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of most of those concepts, like 'karma' and 'zen' etc.

Westerners (especially Americans) tend to interpret them through a very narrow Abrahamic lens that severely impacts their understanding.

Should I try to brainstorm other names then for my product, and remove the "zen" from it?

Zen is often associated with minimalism and ‘calm’. Look at ZenDesk. It’s an apparently no frills support service, and minimalist in design. I don’t mind this. Although the proper name is zazen which means sitting meditation.

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