Mozilla, the Inept Archer
One of my wife’s friends is teaching English to Ukrainian kids, and she sent me this excellent comment today:
One of my students told me today that “Mozilla” in Ukrainian does not sound like a very nice word. He said it sounds like a person who is a very bad at shooting arrows. In other words…. a stupid and inept archer. Just thought you should know.
We are lucky implementing JägerMonkey did not require extensive experience with bow and arrow I guess?
Thanks for sharing this story, Margot!
It’s not a particularly bad word either. It’s what you’d use to taunt someone who missed the target in any sort of a projectile-throwing activity.
It’s a Russian word.
I’m surprised we don’t have an alternate name for Ukraine (and potentially Russia) then.
If it’s a matter of local slang, I suppose that’s a different story.
I found that one word for ‘cool’ in Odessa was not actually cool in Simferopol.
Mark: Well if it’s a teasing word, but none that’s really offensive, then there’s not much of a need to vary names.
I think we need a new logo!
Actually, the word you mean would be written as “mazila” with Latin letters. From http://gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?bts=x&word=%EC%E0%E7%E8%EB%E0:
1. Somebody who makes himself dirty, sloven.
2. Somebody who is clumsy at drawing, writing.
3. Somebody who often misses (in a game, when shooting etc.).
It’s quite a creative misspelling but it sounds close enough that this nickname for Firefox seems well established in Ukraine and Russia: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B0%22+%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80 (26 thousands results despite the quotation marks which are necessary because even Google considers “мазила” and “Mozilla” synonymous).
Thanks for sharing this in more detail, Wladimir. It made me laugh
Regarding Russians and Ukrainians, Mozilla avoided a more disastrous case of naming.
It’s good authors finally called that user interface language XUL, not the word typed in large capital bold font in the header of this early spec: http://xml.coverpages.org/xui-languageSpec.html
Haha I’ll have to tell this to my computer teacher.
“There is no data, there is only XUI”
loled
My girlfriend doesn’t recognize the word at all.