Microsoft’s forthcoming digital music player, dubbed Zune, may make some Hebrew speakers gasp. The name for the device — which will take on the Apple iPod when released later this year — sounds like a vulgarity, specifically the F word, in Hebrew.
-- Bill Gates tells Hebrew speakers to *#@! off and buy an iPod(Digital World Tokyo)Nice. Still, don't companies rebrand products worldwide for just this kind of reason?
tagged: zune, ipod
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Er. Well, the monicker Wii was picked precisely because it was pretty universally "ok". There might have been a few places where that sound isn't acceptable (and, let's face it, in the English-speaking world it is close to a baby term for urination), but I recall specifically the English meaning "we" and the French meaning "oui" as being good reasons for the name.
Which is to say, no, you don't have to rebrand if you work hard to find something that works universally.
Considering the number of hits this page is getting from foriegn IP's searching for "zune hebrew" ... I think this is a bigger deal than I would have thought.
Course, if Sony came out with a product called KUNT - I'm guessing there'd be some angry emails.
Oh man, I think I woke the kids up laughing at that one. Thanks. :^)
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