The US media machine, picks and chooses when some words are appropriate and when not, depending if it fits their agenda.

How about the name "Dick" ? As in e.g. Dick Cheney ? Why isn't it considered a slur, just like "cock" ? It an elephant in the room no one speaks about.

How about the word "pussy" as in a small cat ? It has been used to report by the news on "Pussy Riot", which has a direction connection to the female genitalia.

I think it might be because of the sensationalist nature of the US media as such and their juvenile handling of anything that's taboo.

Coq has been around for 26 years. The USA is not the world. No one is offended. Be more inconspicuous when trying to bait next time.

Admittedly, a lot of us still giggle whenever Coq comes up. :)

Even the documentation mentions the issue and calls the name "unfortunate." So, it's a valid critique even if we should ignore it in discussions just to be productive. :)

Really, where? I've always heard this was more intentional than unfortunate.

From the FAQ:

2 Did you really need to name it like that?

Some French computer scientists have a tradition of naming their software as animal species: Caml, Elan, Foc or Phox are examples of this tacit convention. In French, “coq” means rooster, and it sounds like the initials of the Calculus of Constructions CoC on which it is based.

The name was intentional as they described. The common reception might have also been intentional as a joke of sorts. ;) Anyway, there was a page or interview where a rep called it "unfortunate" without going into detail. The implication in context was that the name's use in Britain or America often distracts from how the tool is used in a given paper. Hence, unfortunate choice of name.

Should've just picked a different animal haha. The name is easy to spell, though.

And also a tribute to Thierry Coquand, the inventor of the CoC.

Yes, that was also in what I read.

I upvoted your original question because it is a legitimate one, whether others like it or not.

I actually have gotten very few odd looks even from non-programmers when pronouncing "Coq" as "cock" _in the proper context_. "Use Coq" would probably yield a different out-of-context interpretation than "For problem X I think we should consider Coq. It allows ..."

I don't think this is much of a problem in practice.

I just refer to Idris when speaking about dependent types. If I talk about Coq, someone will usually make a joke, which is fine as a once off, but if I want to talk about it regularly I can see that being an issue.

The funny thing is that people try to pin this issue on Anglo-Saxon puritanism, when the issue is clearly political correctness. But those are the contradictions in liberal thinking for you.

American rather than Anglo-Saxon I think, and the US has preferred "rooster" over "cock" since the 18th century, have those horrid liberals been oppressing you with political correctness all this time?