For the Francophones - anyone want to buy a watch from CONNARDS in the UK?

Be happy that you do not live in the HQ building of


or in a building across the road from this site



BUT you possibly would prefer to be domiciled in THEIR vicinity
http://www.centovalli.ch/

There along the highway from Lausanne to Geneva is a village with a hwy.-exit whose name is MIES and many Romands wonder why visiting "Alémaniques" are amused

And German speakers in London carefully avoid to speak about that place named Marble Arch

One of our customer is a Mr F u c k e r

Somewhere in the 1950ies/60ies, Rolls Royce planned to produce a new car under the name Silver Mist. When this became known, the RR managers from Frankfurt/Main, Zürich and Wien arrived in London together and their heavy and clear protest convinced those at RR to change the name. I am not sure but think the result was the famous Silver Shadow

But what do you call him to his face..?

Once in Basel, I was passing the local 'Mothercare' shop. In Swizziland it's cald 'Nookiehouse', and it had a red light in the window!

The other that makes my small mind smile is... TAGESHIT, (the daily what?)

Have a nice day all

GREG

Correct. It was the Silver Mist that had to be renamed Silver Shadow briefly before its launch in 1965. It was in production till 1980.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of products with names that are funny in the ears or eyes of the native speakers of the language used, and some of them just sound totally ridiculous. For instance, some German companies (Aldi, for instance) try to give their products a Swiss touch by adding a "-li" diminutive to a brand name or even to an ordinary German word. Now, Swiss German is one of the most diminutive-crazy languages in the world, but trying to sell stuff called "Kräuterli" or "Hustli" in Switzerland will never succeed. Such names sound downright silly.

And then, of course, there are lots of examples like the Mitsubishi Colt, where the original Japanese creators of the name most likely thought of a young horse, whereas most people around the world think of a revolver, or the Mitsubishi Pajero, where the Spanish word pajero means the Patagonian pampas cat but it also means a wanker (see Wankdorf).

Having a dictionary doesn't necessarily mean knowing how to use it.

nobs and nuts

anyone seen the chubby stick advert?

Pretty much the same as the British managers of the, now non existent, Wang Computer company that decided that using the slogan "Wang cares", thought up by our US compatriots, was probably not in the best interests of the company whilst doing business on British shores, and as such flatly refused to use it.

My neighbor works works for them, drives a van with their logo and parks it nearby.

Tom

I'm told the Toyota MR2 was named differently for customers in France for sounding a little too similar to merde.

It's almost understandable 50 years ago, but in the age of let me Google that for you, it's almost impossible to work out why a well known sportswear company thought of a good idea to call its trainers Zyklon.

Or, why a month later, an equally well known engineering giant tried to trademark the same.

http://bit.ly/L8be0e

thanks for making me laugh

I heard a new one the other day, Wixhausen, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wixhausen

Maybe you could explain what's wrong about naming trainers after a storm?

Knife factory, Esslingen, Germany.

The guy who did the tower had obviously some kind of complex about the little John...