It is highly recommended to consider other languages when you want to name a product. Otherwise, you will be a laughing stock to people who know a thing or two about other languages; especially to people like us, language nerds. Here are some product names that turned into something unfortunate in other languages:
1. Fart Bar
Fart bar is an innocent Polish candy bar which simply translates to “lucky bar”. But to an English ear, this bar is far from lucky.
2. Lumia
Lumia sounds like a fancy name for a smartphone. But Spanish speakers might chuckle when they hear it because lumia is slang for prostitute in Spanish.
3. Siri
You wouldn’t wanna call on your apple personal assistant in front of a Georgian because Siri in Georgian means cock.
4. Pizza Hut P’Zone
P’zone (pezón) means nipple in Spanish. Pizza Hut were aware of this association afterwards and created an ad that say “whoa, those things are huge!”
5. Pee Cola
I bet you won’t buy a bottle of this even for a cent. But this is the main kind of cola in Ghana and it translates to very good cola.
6. Bing
In Chinese, bing means illness. No wonder why everyone is avoiding using bing like the plague.
7. Starbucks Latte
Latte means erection in German. Nothing is like starting off your morning with a German latte, right?
8. Sega
I wonder how Italians played in this video game console and had fun. The word Sega in Italian is slang for masturbate. That’s why the company changed the pronunciation of its name to “see-ga” in Italian speaking regions.
9. Tonic Water
Schweppes tonic water translates to toilet water in Italian. They ran an ad campaign in Italy to encourage people to drink their tonic water. At least they were being honest.
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