I'm from Gothenburg, Sweden, which is a city known for its bad puns and where most larger buildings are usually referred to by silly nicknames. Last year, there was a competition to name the new swimming pool by the harbor which they put there to keep people from swimming in the rather filthy water of the nearby river.

As expected, most of the names which received a lot of votes were silly puns and, you know what? They did accept the winning entry. Which means the pool is officially named "Pöl Harbor" ("Pöl" meaning puddle in Swedish). I myself was very pleased with this, though I was unsure whether I preferred this name or the rather gruesome runner-up: "Inälvsbadet". This literally means "the entrails bath", though the word for entrails could also be interpreted as "in-river", hence the pun.

I'm from Stockholm and would like to denounce that Gothenburg is known for its bad puns. Gothenburg is only known as a fisherman village.

A fishing village with over half a million people, and a metro area of nearly 1 million? Around these parts, that'd make it a city.

Relax, I think it's just friendly inter-city banter :)

I thought it was also known for melodeath metal?

In which case, Bath of Entrails would make a good band name.

I'm probably going to have my foot in my mouth pretty quickly about this but how bizarre is the Swedish language that "entrails" and "in-river" could be the same word? lol

Is it a slang term of some kind?

No, it's no slang. Entrails are, in plural, "inälvor". You can see the "in" there and "älv" is a Swedish word for river.

edit: I do not know the etymology of the Swedish word for entrails, but I'd wager it's just coincidence that it is seemingly made up of two other words. It's not unlike the English word "searing" seemingly being composed of "sea" and "ring".

No more bizarre than Ent Rails (you know, railways for Tolkien Ents) is the same as entrails in English.

Just as you can't actually say inriver and pretend it means something in the river in English, you can't say inälv and mean something in an älv in Swedish. But as a pun it is okay, everyone gets the word play.

> Just as you can't actually say inriver and pretend it means something in the river in English

I think "in-river" is pretty acceptable in speech, and mildly so in writing. If you said there was an "in-river pool", I wouldn't bat an eyelash.

That said, the relation between the adjectivizing(?) morphemes "in-" and "at-" (e.g. "at-home bar") and their corresponding prepositions is weird and makes my brain hurt.

Allow me to hijack this thread to tell you about my favorite[1] word.

A Korean word "inbun", when followed by a number, means "amount of serving". So "3 inbun" means "serves three", or "a dish for three".

When NOT followed by a number, it is a different word (with exactly the same spelling and sound). It means "human feces".

[1] LOL, not really.

And to this day (?) Korean farmers had pigs eat human feces. And the word for pig-sty and out-house are apparently of similar origin?

Eh, that practice is gone for at least thirty years, probably more. Health concerns aside, you cannot run a for-profit pig farm with your family's "output"...

I have no idea what your second sentence is talking about. :/

> This literally means "the entrails bath", though the word for entrails could also be interpreted as "in-river", hence the pun.

I approve this message...

Are there any good Batman jokes involving Gothenburg Sweden? Seems like there should be.

There are some puns with the city name, but I haven't heard any Batman ones. It is probably a bit too far-fetched for a good joke. Also, in Swedish, the city is called Göteborg and I actually spent some time considering whether to give its native name or the English version of it when writing my original post.

What does Swedish Batman have with his chips?

Gothenburger.

What's crime does Swedish Batman hate the most?

Gothenburglary.

There was a similar situation a few years back - some local Hungarian government were running an online poll to decide the name of a new local bridge and more importantly you were able to submit your own proposal. Some internet community got wind of this and mobilised to vote the name "Stephen Colbert Bridge" until it was at the top of the standings.

Even though they never went with the name (they elected to use "Megyeri Bridge") Hungary got a bit of a PR boost when the Hungarian Ambassador appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the issue. Sadly I cannot find a video clip, but the wikipedia description captures the moment nicely:

" On September 14, 2006, András Simonyi—the ambassador of Hungary to the United States—announced on The Colbert Report that Stephen Colbert had won the vote. Unfortunately for Colbert, Ambassador Simonyi declared that under Hungarian law, Colbert would have to be fluent in Hungarian, and would have to be deceased in order to have the bridge named for him. However, after saying the rules could most likely be bent, he invited Colbert to visit Hungary and view the construction in person and gave him a Hungarian passport and a 10,000 HUF Bill, with an approximate value of, as the ambassador put it, 'fifty dollars, fifty good US dollars'. Colbert promptly tried to bribe him with said money. "

Edit: yikes, Hungary has had a rough few years - I just checked the fx rates and 10000 forint is worth only $36 nowadays.

It's a bizarre world where an individual has more PR sway than an entire country.

Scott Adams has been musing on this theme lately: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/141428843311/social-media-is-th...

I wonder if he actively realizes that the persuaders on Social Media are inevitably for sale to the highest bidder (albiet with veto power over things they may actually care about)? [I know how much it costs for Martha Stewart to send a tweet about your business... I don't love this world we live in.]

I'm reading between the lines, but I don't think he's advocating for social media becoming the government. I think he thinks he's merely observing what's already happening.

He writes a lot about Trump, but he explicitly says that he could deal with any of the current candidates becoming President. I have wondered if his logic is basically "Social Media is becoming the President no matter what so what 'meat robot' slots to the seat behind the desk in the Oval Office in matters little by comparison".

If you mean that it could in fact be worse than what we have now, you could model what we have now as still being essentially "media" driven, but with no way for anybody to break in the way social media does let some people now. Whether that's really a serious change once corporations do their second-order adjustments... dunno. I expect to still be chewing on these ideas for another few weeks.

This happened in Slovakia too, a couple of years ago. They had a public poll to name a cycle bridge over the Morava. Chuck Norris won, but they opted to call it Freedom Bridge (Cyklomost Slobody) instead.

Funnily enough, Chuck was also the fore-runner for Megyeri Bridge before Colbert got involved, too.

It's all good fun though - and good publicity. Do you think anyone would be talking about a new arctic research vessel if it wasn't for this?

video: http://indavideo.hu/video/A_Stephen_Colbert_hid_sztori_vege

Greenpeace ran a campaign to name a whale in 2007. "Mr. Splashypants" topped the polls, and since Greenpeace's goal was publicity and public engagement, they accepted it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Splashy_Pants

Funny how everyone assumes this is a hoax, i.e. people didn't really want this name. I think it would be a fine name. And for the more traditional/ceremonious types, maybe it will inspire them to pay attention and get involved next time. That's IMHO a better outcome than soliciting participation from the public and then overriding the result by fiat.

The sad (?) reality is that "serious" people are always, always outnumbered by 4chan types. Which is why exclusivity "is a thing" in pretty much all fields of endeavours.

Same thing happened few years ago with Pitbull, when, as a prank, it was voted for him to go to Alaska. He went there.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/pitbull-is-heading-...

I completely agree, the ongoing publicity would be enormous. There's even a very close precedent! https://twitter.com/Hants_fire/status/711962085320728576

They got off easy. At least the top entry wasn't SS Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.

> They should run with it

Hell they should embrace it and have a good painter put a "thomas the train" face on it or something.

Agreed! much like the dogecoin racecar

https://consumerist.com/2014/04/28/the-dogecoin-race-car-is-...

They were running with this as the top story on radio 1 this morning. (I assume they don't want to freak kids out with bombs in Brussels.)

So the amusing name has brought the ship and it's mission to the minds of kids throughout the UK. They also mentioned that the guy who submitted the name was very sorry he had done so.

Oh England :)

Totally this.

And it would be brilliant for kids.

Indeed, if they spent some money on artwork they could do "The Adventures of Boaty McBoatface" and work in it's research activities.

A series of young adult adventure novels are easily possible:

"Boaty McBoatface drills for Deep Ice"

"Boaty McBoatface meets Pagophilus the Harp Seal"

"Boaty McBoatface vs. the Clathrates of Doom"

Books. Cartoons. T-shirts. Educational materials. They're short-sighted if they don't see the opportunity to leverage this for good.

Merchandise! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZove4OTtI

They mentioned this on Radio 1 this morning. First thing the DJ said was 'where can I get a hat with Boaty McBoatface on it'.

How do you think I found out about this? My 8 year old daughter bounded up to me and said "Dad, you won't believe this amazing thing! Guess what they called a boat!" (and I thought "what? oh alright, I'll go along with it") and I said "I don't know sweety, what did they call it?" - to which she took a deep breath and said "Boaty McBoatface!" and burst into laughter.

Now at the time I thought it was just a silly kid's story. Then I went to the BBC...

You maybe right but they are going to have to recruit real scientist to work on the ship who are going to need to put that on their CV.

I don't know how recruiting in that field works but it could be an issue in a lot of people's minds.

(btw it's RSS, Royal Research Ship)

RRS, but one of the suggestions is "RRS Feed".

RRS, I presume?

They should just use the most popular name which is not a joke and then stay silent. Don't add anymore fuel to fire of internet stupidity.

In all seriousness, the UK media have been reporting for years about a lack of young people being interested in science based degrees and this is an opportunity to get not only children but people of all ages interested in what this boat actually does. They should take the opportunity and run with it. Paint a face on it like HN user masklinn suggests, market it and sell it. Get it a guest spot in the Elias children's series (about a coastal lifeboat). Make the world a slightly happier, funnier place.