
WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages - randall
http://wordsafety.com/?hn=1
======
pavlov
Hey guys, I made this last week as a two-evening side project. Happy to see it
posted here, thanks randall!

I know the word lists aren't complete. This was the best I could do given the
time constraint, the fact that I don't actually speak 19 languages... And
also, after two evenings of googling dirty words, I started feeling like I'm
about to acquire Tourette's in some unknown language ;)

I'll update the database with the words submitted here and through the form on
the site. Thanks!

\--

Edit -- here's Google Analytics for this site after 1 hour on the HN
frontpage:

[http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_1736.jpg](http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_1736.jpg)

This is a site that had essentially zero traffic before HN, so I figured this
would be a potentially interesting glimpse into HN's audience.

~~~
thekevan
You may want to look at slang as well. I tried both "knob" and "bell end". It
said both were safe. Maybe they may be safe-ish in the US, but in Britain they
are definitely slang words that could result in quite a chuckle if you named
your app that.

~~~
pyre
Or "root" in Australia.

~~~
RIMR
Quick, somebody point me in the direction of some witty australian UNIX jokes.

~~~
pavlov
What did the sysadmin buy her wife for Valentine's Day? A rootkit.

(Just made that one up... Not genuine Australian. Also, I can't tell jokes.)

~~~
tacticus
well your jokes certainly fit.

------
BasDirks
Dutch:
[http://www.taalkabaal.nl/scheldwoorden/indexa.php](http://www.taalkabaal.nl/scheldwoorden/indexa.php)

Have fun. Some of these are spelled incorrectly, so run them through a spell-
checker.

While I'm at it, let me translate some personal favourites. I realize they are
quite long and unlikely candidates for the next hot SF start-up, but why keep
knowledge away from the masses:

adderengebroedsels - offspring of vipers

argeologisch kontfossiel - archaeological ass fossil

bosuil - Strix aluco

duinbewoner - dune dweller

ebverzuiper - person who drowns during ebb (burnnn)

greppelheks - ditch witch

ingeblikte atlas - canned atlas (??)

janksnor - literally "crying mustache"

kamelenzuurvleesoog - literally "camels-Sauerbraten-eye" (???)

mountendeldarmbeklimmer -- literally "climber of Mt. rectum"

paashaasschaamhaarverzamelaar -- literally "collector of Easter Bunny pubes"

rioolpinguin -- sewer pinguin

tepelbaviaan -- nipple baboon

I have submitted several short and useful Dutch words to grant myself license
for this comment.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
I want to start a razor startup now just so I can call it Janksnor.

~~~
devbug
Dollar Shave Club... but for Scandinavia.

Or a brutally fast Handlebars implementation.

------
orjan
"He had a computer that knew all the names of all the companies, and another
one that checked if the made-up word meant "dickhead" or something in Chinese
or Swedish."

\-- William Gibson, "Mona Lisa Overdrive"

[https://books.google.se/books?id=QojrNYyGMyEC&pg=PA118#v=one...](https://books.google.se/books?id=QojrNYyGMyEC&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
mcorrand
"bite" is safe according to this tool. Any french speaker does a double take
when they see that word though, especially in certain sentences.

For reference: [https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-
bites-...](https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-bites-pauvre-
nancy/)

Edit: Yes, I have submitted it to the database, it should get vetted
eventually. A crowdsourced process for the vetting could be fun too!

~~~
baby
"pipi" as well
[http://i.imgur.com/VcSKnTb.png](http://i.imgur.com/VcSKnTb.png)

~~~
Qantourisc
In Dutch pipi is dialect for urination, often used when talking/referring to
children.

~~~
eridal
In Spanish it's exactly the same.

I wonder were the roots of that is?

~~~
yetihehe
In polish it's "psipsi" which is clearly an onomatopoeia.

------
arihant
So this seems to work for a very small subset of the words I typed. Also, it
seems to only check against dictionary meaning and not cultural usage.

"Tatsu" means "to stand" in Japanese, but is culturally used for erection.
This is just an example, I tried a bunch which I know and none were flagged.

~~~
LoSboccacc
I think this is a case of 'the product is YOU!'

notice the little box 'enter word here'? :P

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That box doesn't seem to permit adding cultural referents / context. If we
added all normal words that _can_ have another meaning, it'd flag almost
everything.

------
olympus
I saw this and immediately thought of an old story where General Motors tried
to sell the Chevy Nova in South America. It hardly sold at all in South
America even though it was a hugely popular car in North America. The reason
turned out to be that "No va" in Spanish translates to "won't go" so GM was
basically trying to sell a sporty car with a misleading name.

Unfortunately this website wouldn't have helped GM sell the Nova since it's
only looking for profanity, but I think that the concept is great and clearly
needed. I hope you develop it further and get to make some money off of it.
Great job!

~~~
nerevarthelame
For what it's worth, the "Nova" story is a myth:
[http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp)

~~~
rmetzler
Here is a whole list of cultural misunderstandings of car manufacturers
[http://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx](http://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx)

------
candeira
One of the most recent corporate mishaps I've learned of is Microsoft Nokia
calling their phone "Lumia", when in Spain "lumi" or "lumia" is an informal
word to mean "prostitute".

Your app doesn't reflect that. I was going to say that you need to source
slang dictionaries, but this one is in the Diccionario de la Real Academia:

[http://buscon.rae.es/drae/srv/search?val=lumia](http://buscon.rae.es/drae/srv/search?val=lumia)

And even in the first random online bilingual dictionary Google threw up:

[http://diccionario.sensagent.com/lumi/es-
en/](http://diccionario.sensagent.com/lumi/es-en/)

So maybe do a bit of scraping/spidering of multilingual dictionaries, starting
with your collected list of bad words?

~~~
dbbolton
I think Wiktionary is a great and underutilized resource. Fairly good
coverage, free, and easily amendable. There is in fact an entry for _lumia_ :
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lumia#Spanish](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lumia#Spanish)

It's actually the basis for a site called The Alternative Dictionaries which
features "colorful extracts": [http://www.alternative-
dictionaries.net/](http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/)

------
elros
I'd be really interested in knowing how do they do the phonetic matching.
Things like, the nonexistent English word "bocket" sounding like Brazilian
slang for blowjob ("boquete"), but only when spoken the way a Brazilian would.

I think this cross-pronouncing thing would actually be harder to tackle: It's
more important to try to match the way users on their home locale would say
the foreign term, than the way the foreign people would say it.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the word Skype, said in Portuguese, is
pronounced as if it were spelt in English as "Shkuipy" (I mean [ʃkaj'pi]).

~~~
djrogers
The lack of phonetic matching is a problem - the most (in?)famous example of
this was the Chevy Nova, which phonetically sounds like 'doesn't go' in
spanish.

~~~
elros
Regarding the Chevy Nova, I always found that story very hard to believe.
While it may seem plausible for someone who does not speak Spanish, someone
who does would quickly note the fact that "no va" is pronounced /no'βa/
(stress on the second syllable) while Nova would be pronounced /'no.βa/
(stress on the first syllable).

These two sounds would not be perceived by a Spanish speaker as being the
same.

~~~
amyjess
Yes, I've heard that saying "Nova" is read as _no va_ is like saying "notable"
is read as "no table".

(of course, the classic Spanish screw-up is the Mitsubishi Pajero, which has
no excuse whatsoever: that's unambiguously the Mitsubishi Wanker)

~~~
danieltillett
I always thought that someone in Mitsubishi named the Pajero knowing exactly
what it meant in Spanish as a joke.

------
616c
Obligatory Arabic story of the last few years: the Pakistani ambassador who
was rejected for service in the Gulf, because his name is Akbar Zib.

This is Arabic for biggest cock.

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B1%20%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%20%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%A8%D8%B1%20%D8%B2%D8%A8)

No reputable source mentions this; only crap newspapers in different countries
mention this. But every person I know in the Arab world knows this internet
meme.

Almost as bad as naming your son after a deceased Libyan dictator, before he
was dead of course. Perhaps I know one of those too. Talking about parenting
jokes.

~~~
ndrscr
There's a guy on Israeli TV named גיא פינס--pronounced "Guy Penis." How's that
for a name?

~~~
ccleve
The classic example of this is the Ford Pinto. That was a naming mistake. (Try
it)

------
maartenscholl
"expertsexchange" only matches the Chinese “cha”, and not "sex" or
"sexchange".

~~~
tomkwok
Coincidentally cha1 ("1" here means the first tone in pinyin) is a sexual
innuendo alluding to sexual intercourse. The character itself, which means "to
insert", has nothing to do with sex in normal usage though. And most
importantly, there is virtually zero resemblance between the pronunciation of
"change" and that of "cha1".

> to have sex (lit. insert).

> Source: a long list of Chinese profanity on Wikipedia.[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity)

------
sanbor
Tried the Spanish word "pajero" (usually translated to "wanker" or "tosser").
Mitsubishi named a car "Pajero" and they had to change the name to "Montero"
in Spanish speaking countries.

Another unfortunate car name is Suzuki Moco. This word neither appears in this
app. "Moco" means "snot" or "booger" in Spanish.

~~~
cossatot
I have found it's important when emailing/texting in Spanish to put the tilde
in 'año', when I normally wouldn't bother with an American keyboard.

~~~
ghurtado
US-Based native Spanish speaker here. Very important indeed, specially when
asking someone their age :) Whenever the ñ is not available (foreign
keyboards, mobile, etc...), a decent substitute is "anyo", which is
phonetically equivalent and also happens to be the Ladino variant of the word.

~~~
pvaldes
Agno is safer (same idea as in 'gnu'). "Anyo" is close phonetically to
"anillo", that is a ring, but also a common source of jokes about little
Frodo's sexuallity.

~~~
notNow
I think Catalan people don't have the "ñ" letter in their alphabet and they
use instead this combination "ny" for that particular sound.

~~~
pvaldes
Well, catalan people have the ñ letter in their alphabet because they are
spaniards, is just that some of them prefer to ignore this for political
reasons, and they choose instead to do simple things complicated.

Both systems are a question of convenience, so no one is perfect. You can
choose between the useful (and trendy in two or three spanish communities)
"ny" or the older "gn" charged of historical context and showing lots of
connections with other latin languages like french. Be aware also that "ny"
leads easily to a "nll" sound that can be annoying, specially when is placed
next to an 'i'.

This is just a personal opinion. Is perfecty ok if you think different, but if
you are interested in mastering the second language with more native speakers
in the world, I'll suggest to avoid the political experiments of the modern
catalan and save yourself a lot of future headaches with grammar and
orthography. To replace the 'ñ' by '~n' will work in most of the cases also.

~~~
6t6t6
And this, kids, is how a Spanish hater looks like.

If anyone is interested, Catalan[1] is a Latin language spoken in Catalonia
and other areas of the North East of Spain, South of France and a city in
Italy. It is also the official language of a country: Andorra.

It has about 10 million speakers[2], a bit more that Swedish, that is an
official working language in the EU.

Its use has been forbidden in Spain during 300 years[3] -until the death of
the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco- but, even though it has managed
to survive until today.

And there's a top level domain, .cat[4], that is intended for websites that
use Catalan language.

Also, and we don't use Catalan because we are doing political experiments, or
to annoy Spanish people. We use it because, for some of us, is our native
language!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#Number_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#Number_of_speakers)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language#Spanish_state...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language#Spanish_state:_18th_to_20th_centuries)
[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat)

~~~
pvaldes
And this, kids, is one of the many problems with some Catalonian people.
Persecutory delusion. "Spain hates us".

~~~
6t6t6
I was answering to you, not to all Spain.

And I did because I think that your comment stating that Catalan language and
culture are a "political experiment" is not only offensive to Catalans -and
anybody a little common sense- but also shows that you have a huge lack of
understanding about Spanish culture and history.

------
personlurking
Pretty cool. And the example I chose, funny.

I searched "foda" (f--- in Brazil) just to try it out, here's the result,
which actually mentions the Amazon.
[http://i.imgur.com/CUpSgN6.png](http://i.imgur.com/CUpSgN6.png)

~~~
schoen
You don't have to go very deep into the Amazon at all for that to be an
insult. :-) What an amusing example.

------
eterm
There needs to be a "No results found" type result. Currently it's impossible
to tell the difference between no result and an empty result.

------
orf
Interesting, I recently found out that one of my usernames on a popular game
means "shitman" in finnish or swedish, not through this site though (and it
doesn't appear to bring anything up). Great idea though!

Also the word search field has an XSS, try entering
"<script>alert(1)</script>". Not sure if it's a big deal but it's good to be
safe.

------
odabaxok
I believe you can make a good use of
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/](http://www.urbandictionary.com/) to update
your database, because there are also lot of foreign words, which you miss at
the moment. (pula - Romanian for dick, fasz - Hungarian for dick, piča -
Czech/Slovak for cunt, etc.)

~~~
anonfunction
They have an unofficial API[1] that could be used.

[1]
[http://api.urbandictionary.com/v0/define?term=culo](http://api.urbandictionary.com/v0/define?term=culo)

------
ecesena
Suggestion for improvement: numbers.

I was about to name a project "Plate88", and a couple of people independently
pointed out a reference to the nazi salute [1].

We then renamed it to Plate28, hopefully safer.

Anyway, maybe worth considering these use cases.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_\(number\))

~~~
protomyth
Which brings us to the second part of naming things. I wouldn't tell someone
in NASCAR country that 88 means a nazi salute unless you really want to
offend.

~~~
ecesena
Exactly -- we want to do a healthy/educational thing, imagine our surprise
knowing that...

~~~
protomyth
I guess I would say the bad meaning of 88 is not very relevant and certainly
shouldn't stop a company operating in Asia from using it. Heck, a golf company
using 88 would mean double snowmen rather than any dark meaning beyond a bad
score.

------
lifeisstillgood
It's great :-)

However, could I Suggest there are two markets for this and you might be
falling between two stools.

Firstly there is the market we have here - looking for dirty words in
different languages. I _love_ the petites bites ad - and it would be great to
have a crowd sourced "daily WTF" site of amusing failures

But the usage of your site looks ... Serious, with half an eye maybe on
charging marketing departments for access. Which is almost impossible because
no sane database can catch MR2.

But if the entertainment site catches on, you have a ready made list of
reliable dirty-minded experts whose private opinions and double entendres you
can charge marketing depts to put their ideas in front of them -
confidentially ensuring they don't screw up. And given that the number of
language to language potential screwups is n^^2 and the experts are n you
should be ok.

Anyway - it's a lovely idea and reminds me of Douglas Adams' "Go stick your
head in a pig".

------
Someone
_" Results for “Hello”

“hell”

English: heck

Direct match at start or end, potentially serious issue! 335 million native
speakers, about 1.5 billion speakers in total."_

Isn't that overdoing it a little?

~~~
Retra
False positives are far more useful than false negatives.

------
paulsutter
Excellent idea.

Given the number of people here who missed the "add a word" function, you
might want to mention it up top with a negative result.

> No results found for this search. It looks likely that it's safe...

say this in hopes to get fuller coverage because it looks like a useful tool.

~~~
pavlov
I updated the "no results" text, thanks!

------
SNvD7vEJ
Yeah, also, a classic one we had here in Sweden:

Honda released this new small car model named "Honda Fitta", and one of the
slogans were something like "small on the outside, large on inside".

In Swedish, "Fitta" is a crude word for female genitalia.

The car was quickly renamed "Honda Jazz".

A link to a Swedish article, translated by Google:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.automotorsport.se%2Fartiklar%2Fnyheter%2F20020403%2Ffitta-
blev-dyr-affar-for-honda&edit-text=)

~~~
DonaldFisk
I was going to post something about this myself, but decided it was still
unverified. The Auto Motor & Sport article was as far as the trail took me. It
quotes the Dagens Nyheter, which in turn quotes an anonymous Japanese car
magazine, whose article may or may not be true (if it exists at all).

This has the hallmarks of an urban legend: Japanese car manufacturers do have
previous form with the Toyota MR2 and Mitsubishi Pajero, so the story is
plausible; there's a moral here; and the story has not been followed all the
way to its original source.

------
kinow
There's a company here in New Zealand called RaboDirect. Rabo means "tail" in
Portuguese (and in Spanish maybe?). But it can also mean arse or ass. In most
cases I'd think people were talking about arses than about tails. This was not
caught by wordsafety :/

Not sure if you are breaking up words. I remember a friend told me about some
algorithm that works for that, and is used by German linguists... not exactly
stemmers, but there was another thing that could be useful too.

Anyway, thanks for sharing! Looking great.

------
petercooper
I've submitted it but it brought up nothing for "wog". Did this due to the
"wogrammer"/"wog" issue pointed out on Twitter yesterday. I haven't heard it
in recent years but "wog" was used much like the n-word when I was a kid in
the UK and appears to still carry some of that meaning:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog)

"slope" is another, but I don't know if I'll submit it since no-one seemed to
have heard of it at the time. Jeremy Clarkson got in trouble over it though -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-
gear/10995483/Jeremy...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-
gear/10995483/Jeremy-Clarksons-slope-joke-on-Top-Gear-was-deliberate-use-of-
racist-term-Ofcom-rules.html)

I absolutely love the idea of having a newsletter on the backend full of awful
words submitted though - a rather "cute" idea.

------
avar
I looked up "Bora". No results. The Volkswagen Bora was somewhat famous in
Iceland because "Bora" means "Anus". You could drive the Volkswagen Anus! The
vendor went out of its way to mispronounce the name in their TV ads as "Bóra",
which would be like pronouncing "Anus" as "Aneece" or something like that.

------
pablomolnar
As we are in the subject, does the brand names "Dickies" "Dick's Sporting
Goods" or even the character "Dick Tracy" seems awkward name choices for US
people/native english speakers?

As a ESL, the first time I heard of them it was kind of funny. I guess when
one grows up in the context of those names is not that appalling...

~~~
cmpb
You're exactly right. Growing up with the words removes them from being
recognizable as dirty. Note also, Dick is a name (or nickname for Richard).
Language is weird sometimes...

------
temuze
This is great! There are certain puns/combos that would be really hard to
catch though.

For example - the Ford Nova. In Spanish, it literally translates to "no va"
"doesn't go". Terrible name for a car.

I'm unsure how to make this understand the context of the product, but that
would be the next step

~~~
nvader
I've always been pretty skeptical about Nova in particular. It's like an
English speaker going to a restaurant named "Notable": we wouldn't expect to
have to eat on the floor.

------
werber
This is really a shame, I would hate to see unintentionally awful things in
corporate media go away!

------
markdown
How do you account for spelling?

In Fijian, "caita" means "fuck" or "fuck it", but the word is pronounced
"thaita". From a fijian perspective, seeing both "caita" and "thaita" would
bring the swear-word to mind.

------
osipov
It fails on the classic Nova check:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova#Urba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova#Urban_legend)

~~~
pavlov
It would be really hard to capture this kind of double meaning that only
applies to a certain product category... "Doesn't go" is certainly an unwanted
association for a car, but it wouldn't matter for most products.

To make it more complicated, "nova" actually has the same astronomical meaning
in Spanish as in English:

[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova)

So it's fine in some contexts, bad in some very specific context. Someone
smarter than me will probably crack problems like this with AI...

------
tucif
It would be nice this detected double meaning phrases, although it might be
hard to implement. In spanish many combinations of 'safe' words will generate
very 'unsafe' meanings, probably many other languages too.

------
davidw
Italian one needs work. It did not have 'minchia' in it, which is no longer
even all that regional, AFAIK. Didn't have 'mona' either, although that could
be foregiven as it's dialect in the Veneto.

~~~
ragazzina
italian is definitely lacking. it doesn't recognize STOCATSO nor ESTIGRANQATSI
nor euphemisms such as patata, passera..

------
tsotha
If only Miyazaki would have had this when he named _Laputa: Castle in the sky_

~~~
jcl
FWIW, he got the name from Jonathan Swift:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa)

~~~
tsotha
Who... apparently didn't speak Spanish.

~~~
desdiv
>As "la puta" means "the whore" (see Spanish profanity), some Spanish editions
of "Gulliver's Travels" use "Lapuntu", "Laput", "Lapuda" and "Lupata" as
bowdlerisations. It is likely, given Swift's brand of satire, that he was
aware of the Spanish meaning. (Gulliver, himself, claimed Spanish among the
many languages in which he was fluent.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa)

------
limaoscarjuliet
Do not trust yet - list is not complete. Some known Polish bad words are not
there.

~~~
aluhut
Phonetic does not work also. Tried qrwa, qurwa, kuhrwa,. Nothing. They also
find hui (russian) but not huj or chuj.

~~~
yetihehe
Yeah, I've had some fine time trying to remember most of polish swear words.
But it will probably never properly take into account the variety of word
"pierdolić".

------
jstoiko
Just tried the word "crotte" which means "dung" in french. It returned "No
results found for this search. It looks likely that it's safe." Phew, it's a
good thing I speak french :)

------
raverbashing
Maybe it should include English words as well?

Beaver returns nothing

'caca' and 'pede' do return, so props for that

'bosta' matches but maybe Josta should?

'sharmuta' also matches (with a different spelling, but it's probably a
variation)

~~~
pimlottc
Yes, it seems to be missing a fair bit of English slang, like "fanny", "root",
"gigolo"...

------
mojobot
False positive: "hat" was flagged for "idiot" in English. I can't find a
dictionary with that definition, and it's not one that I'm familiar with as a
native speaker.

------
JoeAltmaier
Is a start. How about death and failure type words? Muerta doesn't elicit any
warning. And 'Nova' is famous for its Spanish meaning (apocryphal?) - words
like that might be hard to catch.

------
V-2
It's reasonably good - I tested it for Polish swearwords, it misses some no-
nos, such as "alfons" (which stands for "pimp"), I actually submitted this :)

It reminded me of this major company
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osram)
whose name happens to be "future tense conjugation of verb >to shit<" (a spot-
on match, and the website correctly detects it) :)

It was founded in 1919 when the website didn't exist yet

------
fabiofzero
Found a hole on my first try. 'Foda' in Portuguese is 'fuck', yet the app
deemed it to be safe. 'Foda-se' (fuck you) wasn't there either - submitted
both.

------
rramdin
I've been blessed to name my new startup "Phucker."

~~~
probinso
"phuck" works as well

------
alanh
> _We respect your privacy — input is never logged or monitored._

Except it _is_ logged and monitored by the US Government because this site
uses unencrypted HTTP.

Otherwise, a commendable sentiment…

------
cwkoss
Anyone find any real-world matches? I was able to get positives by typing in
foreign curses directly, but couldn't find any startups with foreign curses in
their name.

~~~
elros
Not a startup, but yesterday I was impressed with the font Skolar, which name
I mistakenly remembered as Skola, and apparently it's considered close enough
to "Chola", which is Hindi for clitoris.

The "level of worriness" does go down (pun intended) when I type the font's
correct name.

------
hiraki9
Similar app for iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/profanity-
check/id923020053](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/profanity-
check/id923020053)

Blog post: [http://blog.lexiconbranding.com/2015/05/12/our-first-
iphone-...](http://blog.lexiconbranding.com/2015/05/12/our-first-iphone-app-
profanity-check/)

------
bbrazil
Doesn't catch "tineh", which is apparently a derogatory term for Indians
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tineh](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tineh),
so probably wise to also check UD and Google.

I was going to have that as part of my company name until I discovered that
(tineh is a transliteration of the word for "fire" in Irish).

------
wyclif
'Results for “nova”: Spanish: did you know that the popular anecdote about the
Chevrolet Nova is an urban legend? Google for "snopes nova".'

I liked that.

------
rlidwka
It doesn't list the word "Belgium". Even though according to Douglas Adams
that's the most offensive word in the galaxy. :)

------
sytelus
This would sell much better as baby name checker.

------
GhotiFish
Where was this when these guys were picking their name?

[http://pidora.ca/](http://pidora.ca/)

~~~
vaskas
155 million native speakers.

------
berbatof
Aren't you the creator of Pixel Conduit? I used your tool for some VFX works
and recently saw that you are creating software for web animations, but it ia
a surprise to see you come up with such a tool. By the way, I am planning to
create a slang database for Turkish and Turkic languages. I would like to
share the database with you as I develop.

------
tomsmeding
It seems that "fuk" is not recognised as sounding like "fuck". Might want to
look at that phonetic matcher :)

~~~
edeion
While it could help some people around to know about it:
[http://www.tripadvisor.fr/Restaurant_Review-g298113-d4906941...](http://www.tripadvisor.fr/Restaurant_Review-g298113-d4906941-Reviews-
Fukyu_an-Takayama_Gifu_Prefecture_Chubu.html)

------
maartenscholl
I think this should also do a phoneme based comparison, for example the photo
sharing website Flickr is pronounced like this word (as a slang word it is
well known)
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flikker](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flikker)

~~~
ludamad
Do you know of any high-quality phonemic dictionaries?

~~~
schoen
There is such a thing for English, the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.

Very, very useful, although specific to American English.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Pronouncing_Dictionary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Pronouncing_Dictionary)

I've succeeding in using it to solve puzzles that had to do with how words
were pronounced, as opposed to how they were spelled.

------
lvh
Excellent idea, but the lists need to be expanded. Didn't catch any of the
Slavic words I threw its way.

------
babuskov
Is Russian really supported? I tried both Cyrillic and Latin transliteration
of some words and it reports it's all safe. For example, try any of the
Russian synonyms for "shit". "говно" transliterates to "govno" and both check
out as safe.

------
semicolondev
Submitted bunch of Nepali swear words. People in Nepal will laugh out a loud
when English speaking people talk about renting a Condo or generating a Rand
number. Here are few /swear/ words in Nepali (Spoken by ~30M people)

Chick

Goo

Moose

Turi

Condo

Moot

Rand

Chalk

Lado

PuT

Fuse

If you are wondering what these words mean check this:

[http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Nepali](http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Nepali)

~~~
igravious
Turi and Lado are not words in English? (Unless I'm very much mistaken). All
the other's are, bar Rand, but that is a variable name beloved of coders!

~~~
semicolondev
Turi prefixes Turing (which means the act of pissing in Nepali) and Lado is
popular in Spanish i guess.

------
pvaldes
One of the funniest in Spain: facultad (faculty). An innocent word, with a
very common and poisoned abbreviature. "Nos vamos a la fac" (We go to the
university). English speakers always hear another thing. Totally homophone
with the called "f-word"

------
bernardom
I added "cu" (Portuguese for "ass"), but I'm not able to get it to match.
Guessing there's a size limit?

I wonder if it makes sense to add "ku" as well? When I was a kid, I'd always
giggle at the American candy bar "Kudos."

This is really cool....

Kudos.

------
cosmez
No results found for this search. There's a reasonable chance that it's
safe...

But you can never be quite sure. There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the
world. Somewhere deep in the Amazonian jungle, "anal" could be an insult that
gets you killed.

~~~
princeb
not only that (incomplete coverage of languages) - words can also have
phonetic similarities to vulgarities without the same spelling.

------
cmenge
It wouldn't have saved Mitsubishi:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero)

But I like the idea and will submit a few words

------
iskander
Missed a few of the ones I tried:

"zina" "eir" "khuee" "popa"

------
joshmn
I use a similar method to find brandable names and domain names. I'll input a
word or synonym of into Google Lang Tools and translate it into all the
available languages. I've had really good success in doing so.

------
RIMR
So there's a restaurant near me called "Pho King". It's pho king delicious.
Anyway, this tool doesn't know how 'pho' is pronounced in Vietnamese because
it didn't catch it.

------
akie
It literally fails on the first word I tried, the/a Dutch word for 'penis':
[http://imgur.com/Mw6Efx0](http://imgur.com/Mw6Efx0)

------
solidpy
If you are still here, it would be useful if we could link to a word, e.g.:
[http://wordsafety.com?word=dimwit](http://wordsafety.com?word=dimwit)

------
schoen
This seems like a nice idea, but many of the comments here are pointing to
omissions that the people commenting feel could be serious.

I guess I see six kinds of potential difficulties:

① There are so many languages out there, including languages will millions of
speakers who might eventually come across your thing. Maybe that's not an
issue for tangible products that will be marketed to specific territories.

② There are so many slang terms out there; each individual language might well
have thousands of terms that have a rude, sexual, or excretory meaning, or
that are used as a slur against some group. Also, some languages have
expletives that don't correspond to expletives in other languages.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity)

③ People have pointed out that phonetic matching is hard when you're dealing
with different languages' orthographies and phonologies, and you can have the
problem of "the source language's intended pronunciation sounds like an
offensive word in the other language", "the other language's likely
pronunciation of the written term sounds like an offensive word in the other
language", or even other combinations among highly multilingual populations.
"Sounds like" is sometimes challenging to automate in software, for example
because epenthesis of a vowel may not be enough to remove the association.
(But I think Levenshtein edit distance between phonemic transcriptions can
kind of sort of work.)

Also, the "MR2" example someone gave shows that understanding how people will
pronounce something in different languages is complicated: you have to know
that the number two in French is "deux" /dø/.

④ People might also perceive something as an offensive reference that isn't
even familiar to people elsewhere, like a reference to an upsetting person,
place, or event. Reportedly some people in India have named people and
businesses after Adolf Hitler just because he was famous, for example. I bet
it's easy to do this cross-culturally in general.

⑤ As people point out with the Chevy Nova story, there might be a reason why a
product name would become the target of ridicule in a particular language even
if it's not offensive. That's true even if it didn't literally happen to the
Chevy Nova.

⑥ It might even turn out that the space of offensive references is so dense
that there is nothing that isn't a near-homophone of something pretty
offensive in _some_ language.

Anyway, I think this project is really neat; I'm just reminded from people's
comments that natural language is hard! There's scope to keep expanding this
site, and I think there are also existing "cultural consultant" businesses
that try to deal with these problems through human review (I wonder how many
of them have consultants on contract from many widely varying cultures, which
seems especially useful in the Internet era).

~~~
schoen
A funny page that might be support for point ⑥ is

[https://web.archive.org/web/20071112172929/http://members.ao...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071112172929/http://members.aol.com/yahyam/coincidence.html)

If you can take an arbitrary word and find a coincidental homophonous synonym
(or antonym) in some other language, you can probably find a coincidental
homophonous expletive or sexual reference in some other language too!

(These coincidences are _not_ cognates -- that's part of what "coincidence"
means here.)

------
maxhou
I'd have expected a small easteregg for the word "bro" ;)

------
AtlasLion
Searched for Tina but it found nothing, in North Africa it means pu$$y,

~~~
markdown
What are we, five year olds?

Pussy.

------
ajonit
You seem to have a good grip on Hindi words :) This is a good idea. Last I
heard, Accenture spent good amount of $$$ to verify the name in several
languages before fixing on that name!

------
glibgil
"cu" gets a pass.
[https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/cu](https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/cu)

------
thetruthseeker1
It will be great if the program checks for phonetically similar words as well,
currently, looks like it doesn't. Bhat (India), pronounced like 'butt' is not
flagged.

------
randunel
It doesn't match some balkanic or eastern european words.

Some of us don't appreciate tracking links, please get rid of tracking so we
don't have to manually edit the urls.

------
DarkContinent
I tried Tessa and it means "to pee." How come it is not on the list? I know
it's not a swear word, but it's still a name with negative connotations.

~~~
Rockdtben
There is a form to submit words that are missing.

------
garfieldnate
Funny, it gets Siri, which has to be katakana-ized specially, but it misses
both ketu and ketsu. What kind of database are you using? This is a great
idea, by the way.

------
nutjob123
Results for “home” “ho” English: woman Direct match at start or end,
potentially serious issue! 335 million native speakers, about 1.5 billion
speakers in total.

------
tptacek
Misses "matasano" -> "quack doctor".

------
PaulHoule
The phonetic matching doesn't catch "Phuck"

------
sandworm101
It's missing rather a big one. "Mist" means something very different in
german.

My point: Is this connected to dictionaries or is it all crowdsourced data?

~~~
personlurking
Isn't 'mist' like 'darn' in English?

~~~
pluma
"Darn" is a minced oath. Mist, simply means "crap" or "manure". A pile of
manure is called "Misthaufen" (crap heap), a pitchfork for handling manure is
called "Mistforke" or "Mistgabel" (crap fork). It's a bit vulgar but so is the
subject matter.

But you can also use it as a general expression of discontent: "Mist!" is
something you might exclaim if you just dropped something expensive and
fragile. It's still vulgar but it's something you'd find far more appropriate
around the young ones than the harsher "Scheiße!" (shit).

It's basically the little brother of "shit" in the same way as "dumb" is the
little brother of "retarded".

You might legitimately hear someone curse at the "Mistkatze" (Katze = cat)
that just peed on the bed, or the "Mistauto" (Auto = car) that refuses to
start or simply shout "So ein Mist!" when they find out they've spent the past
hour aligning the wallpaper upside down.

The equivalent of "damn" would be "verdammt" and there are minced oaths for
that in German as well (although nowadays they're generally considered cute
and not something you'd use only because you're mild-mannered or religious).

~~~
sandworm101
Man, don't put "dumb" anywhere near "retarded". I don't want another literal
user for a word (retarded=delayed, dumb=mute) to disappear in the name of
political correctness.

To quote from TGOTG: "This dumb tree, he is my friend." Groot is dumb because
his is effectively a mute. Drax was not commenting in any way on his
intelligence.

------
scoopr
Ah good, it matches ‘perse’, which was a slight amusement when seeing the
expensive clothing brand ‘James Perse’ while visiting the US :)

------
paulnechifor
While you have this on the front page, why not start a repo where people can
send pull requests, rather than submit one word at a time?

------
normloman
This doesn't work for Esperanto. Fiku vin!

------
konne88
I would have expected "Coq" to fail.

~~~
xigency
I would have expected Cox Communications to fail.

------
serverholic
FYI this doesn't check for words that sound like swear words. For example,
it'll detect Fuck but not Fack.

~~~
eterm
With the input box I suspect they want the database to be crowdsourced. I
wonder if they vet the input, if we all try hard enough might we get
hackernews into the swear list?

------
ivankirigin
I searched "gift" expecting "poison" from German, and was disappointed when
nothing came up.

------
sterl
Missing Zune which means Penis in Quebec.

------
dradtke
It didn't catch anything on "phuck," despite claiming that it checks
phonetically.

Still a nice idea, though.

------
return0
Doesnt detect any greek curse words

------
wordbank
You'll have a real hard time with Slavic languages. ;)

Trying to add all the things you missed meanwhile.

------
Hydral1k
Interesting. You even have support for converting ß to ss. e.g. scheissekopf
-> scheiße

------
briholt
It doesn't have "pinche" which is about the most common Mexican curse word.

------
Aardwolf
Doesn't support even the most dirty Dutch words! Could use more languages :)

------
jagermo
The guys at Wix should have had that before they entered the german market.

------
mrbig4545
It says "pute" is fine, but google translate says otherwise…

edit: I submitted it

------
hougaard
Missing danish ! There are some really good curse words in danish :)

------
magic_beans
"Bite"... means "dick" in french...

------
donatj
> Results for “boomerang”

> “bum”

> English: butt

> Direct match at start or end, potentially serious issue!

lol.

------
dark_knight3141
Very nice ! could save the day in foreign country

------
tegansnyder
There might be a good service in this as an API.

------
philfrasty
wix.com should have had a look at that site...

------
JJN
Wang. No results found! Kimmy. No results found!

Interesting.

------
carrotleads
tried a few words from Indian languages and got matches for other languages..

Interesting to see how you have implemented this...

------
hokkos
Doesn't work in French : caca, bite

------
adad95
"GIT" is safe. hehehehe

------
xd1936
Solid.

[http://i.imgur.com/tnjNMs1.png](http://i.imgur.com/tnjNMs1.png)

~~~
dandrino
For those who don't get the reference, there is an urban legend that the Chevy
Nova sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because "no va" translates to
"no go".

------
zobzu
tried a few common insults in my native tongue (french) and it detected
none...

------
gre
mensa means stupid in spanish.

------
BasDirks
submitted a bunch in Dutch.

------
RomanPushkin
pajero is not safe

~~~
marianov
Was the first thing I tried being from Argentina. Big fail.

------
anEasternGoat
poo is all good.

------
gernig
Searched for Imen, nothing.

Lousy program

~~~
randall
Fix it then! Contribute. This is a 2 day program. Help him out!

