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[Nestor Catano <nestor.catano AT gmail.com>]

Words and sounds mean different things in different languages - Many English words and sounds mean bad things in French, Spanish or other languages too, but that does not mean those words should be avoided or changed - Coq (rooster) is a (the) national French symbol, it is not just a made-up word - the English word “byte” reads poorly in French (it reads like Coq in English), should the word “byte” be changed? Not at all.

Best

Nestor.

On Apr 7, 2021, at 7:03 AM, Wilayat Khan <wilayatk AT gmail.com> wrote:

I think this issue should not be considered as a French name versus its American interpretation. As many of us talked about, English is an international language and many of Coq users and students are reading Coq reading material in English. English is not a native language of myself nor my students, but the English pronunciation of 'Coq' is offensive. Furthermore, if a huge community is not happy with 'Coq' due to its slang meaning in English, that equally means that the huge community is eager to use, understand and recognize the significance of this great tool. 

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 3:36 AM Benedikt Ahrens <benedikt.ahrens AT gmail.com> wrote:

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.