The Coq mailing list

[Benedikt Ahrens <benedikt.ahrens AT gmail.com>]

Dear Derek, dear all,

"Coquina" sounds very much like "coquine", which in french can mean 
"slut". Is this acceptable, because it is not English?

A naive Google search tells me that there are 7000 languages in the 
world. Are suggestions for new names going to be vetted against all of them?

I cannot help feeling that this movement to abolish the name "Coq" is an 
instance of anti-diversity (here, of language) making me feel, in turn, 
quite uncomfortable.

Best,
Benedikt


On 06/04/2021 23:23, Derek Dreyer wrote:
> Indeed, lots of good suggestions on the wiki.  I particularly like the
> suggestion of Coquina, which in addition to combining Coq and Gallina,
> also has semantic value.  According to Wikipedia, "Coquina
> (/koʊˈkiːnə/) is a sedimentary rock that is composed either wholly or
> almost entirely of the transported, abraded, and mechanically sorted
> fragments of the shells of mollusks, trilobites, brachiopods, or other
> invertebrates."
>
> What's more foundational than a rock?!  Especially one with
> mechanically *sort*-ed fragments! ;-)
>
> Best regards,
> Derek
>
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 9:30 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.