"Bard" always struck me a bad naming - unfamiliar, unfriendly, too cerebral. I think the name was an impediment against establishing a household brand.
It's possible that it sounds even worse in other languages. That is, it might sound like bad words, onomatopoeia for bodily functions, or common exclamations (that would lead to lots of false positives).
I think it could have been established as a brand in the US, given Google's scale. Put a lute in the branding, run some funny commercials, and you're done.
EDIT: one thing no amount of branding can fix — the likelihood that people reach for "doh, Bard" (a la Simpsons) when Bard messes up. I could see that becoming a thing.
The Witcher is one of Netflix's most watch shows. I'd also imagine that most people in English speaking countries have been exposed to Shakespeare's nickname in high school English classes.
It’s generally a common trope in fantasy and Romanticist literature. It’s also a word that exists in virtually all European languages in a similar form (bard, bardo, barde, бард), although similar but different forms may be a negative.
I don't think it's that out there. You'd have to be quite uninformed to have never heard of it. It's no verderer or reeve (medieval positions that most people actually will not have heard of).
