The Coq mailing list

[Vadim Zaliva <lord AT crocodile.org>]

I personally feel that as educators, we need to try to elevate the level of the public discourse so jokes around "Coq" will be less likely to appear. Many topics and terms that caused giggles and offensive jokes a few decades ago now could be openly discussed in modern society. That's why my initial reaction was against the name change. Of course, we could not change every person out there, but for example, we can start with students and fellow researchers.

However reading some messages from female (and some male) members of our community, relating their and their colleagues' experiences convinced that indeed it could make some people really uncomfortable. While I still thinking the education and normalization of the name of our favorite proof assistant is the best way, we do not want to do this at expense of our community members who are affected but do not want to fight this fight.

It looks like the consensus is that we can use a better logo.

As to the name change I think coming up with an alternative name while keeping the old one for historical reasons perhaps the way to go.

I just wanted to publicly state my position as it evolved since my earlier comments on this topic.

Vadim

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 2:30 PM Luís Cruz-Filipe <lcfilipe AT gmail.com> wrote:

To be honest, when I first started reading this thread I thought it was an April Fool's joke.

On the topic of the logo, I belong to the club of those that can't see anything but a rooster, even after being told that it looks like something else. I never even questioned that the logo could be anything else.

As for changing the name of Coq to something else, I also find it hard to digest. It is more than a bit disturbing that the name of a program that is developed in France should be changed because of how it sounds in English. Would we be having this conversation if people from France complained that the name of an American software sounds offensive in French?

.Cheers,

Luís

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 9:59 PM Kevin Sullivan <sullivan.kevinj AT gmail.com> wrote:

Another data point: I for one am very uncomfortable every time I have to pronounce the name of the system in front of a class of undergraduate young men and women, or even graduate students. There can be no question that it makes many people uncomfortable enough to be harmful. We're now in a world in which we're working hard to improve diversity and the inclusion of historically under-represented groups in our field *because it makes our field stronger*. We *really, really, really* should find a way to avoid having to repeat what too many people hear as an offensive juvenile male sex joke as part of our professional activites.  It's past time to change the name. "Coke" never really caught on. If the muses speak to me, I'll add a suggestion or two to the Wiki page. I understand and can laugh at the humor with the best of them, but there's a place for that kind of humor, and really the classroom isn't it.

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 3:30 PM Talia Ringer <tringer AT cs.washington.edu> wrote:

My favorite suggestions in the wiki are the ones that include Coq as a substring, so that you can keep referring to it as Coq in French, and just elaborate in English.

Also, I'm really happy to see so many suggestions and so much constructive feedback in the Wiki! I would expect this community to be constructive ;)

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 11:45 AM Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias <e AT x80.org> wrote:

Andrew Appel <appel AT princeton.edu> writes:

> So I propose a solution for discussion: keep the name Coq and explain
> that the correct pronunciation in English of the tool name is "Coke"
> (and this pronunciation has nothing to do with the pronunciation of
> coq in French or cock in English). But for this solution to work, the
> whole (anglophone) community has to adopt it.

Indeed, at the very least the Coq team should officially recommend to
pronounce "Coq" as "coke" in English; this is a solution not exempt of
flaws, but it seems to me that it is the only-short term viable
workaround for now.

I will make the point on the next Coq dev meeting.

My impression is that the Coq team would be happy to consider a name
change would a good replacement come up, there is indeed great concern
w.r.t. the side-effects of the current name.

We don't get reminded often of it tho, I'd say mainly due to two reasons:

- IAANM, there is not native English speaker in the Coq team

- Research and work in France happens mostly in French, and it turns out
  that "Coq" is a superb name in French! It is easily associated to
  "national pride", which really helps (subconsciously) in national
  funding contexts for example.

Brainstorming a bit, a possibility to try to keep the best of both
worlds is to keep "The Coq Project" as the official name of the project,
however name the particular implementation distributed by the project in
a different way.

Kind regards,
E.

--

"La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien a ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien a enlever."  (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)