I remember when the iPad was announced, and everyone said that people would only ever think of feminine products when they heard the name. It might have been true for a few months, but now it seems quaint that we ever had such concerns.

Still, what was wrong with iSlate?

Trying saying it non-rhotically, like a British television presenter

Sounds like "bot", which is good from a topical perspective, but bad from a false-positive perspective.

If you really give it some gusto ("baaaaaaahuhhd") nobody will confuse them :-)

That sounds closer to a working class Massachusetts pronunciation.

Yes, just in time for a Super Bowl commercial: Smaht Bahd

Barti the only bard to me

When I hear "bard", I think of this guy from the Asterix comics first: https://asterix.com/en/portfolio/cacofonix/ - who is notorious for getting on everyone's nerves with his constant singing.

> We are not talking here about the rain he brings on each time exercises his vocal cords, but rather about the prevailing atmosphere in the village: when it is time to party, when wild boar are roasting on the spit, you can be sure to find Cacofonix tied hand and feet with a gag in his mouth.

> [Gemini] sounds like a legendary space mission

Well, it is one. I wish they'd choose a slightly more unique name but camping on well-known words is a beloved tech tradition.

Bard is really funny to me to make fun of. It feels like the discount version of ChatGPT. Like the way that (ironically) TV shows would get microsoft sponsoring and the characters would say "oh you should Bing that", a phrase no human would normally say, and I like to be "ah let me see what Bard thinks about this".

> To me, bard just sounds phonetically gross. Reminds me of “fart” or “beard.”

WTF? Do people normally think about words in this way, utterly divorced from their meaning?

Yes, people that can hear similarities between words do that.

Understand that this is not condesending in any way, as I do not have this experience.

If there are these "Feelings" around these words, how is any sentence correctly taken at face value. How does one communicate to these people the direct and correct meaning of the terms used.

For example, sentence sounds like seance, do they feel like i'm asking the spirits of the dead ?

Correct sounds like wrecked, do they assume that everything is broken in the above sentence.

Is communication with fraught with unknown minefields of unintended emotions and misundestandings ?

Not at all, these "unintended" emotions can be ignored for the most part. But if you ask me, then google is in my foreigner ear one of the stupidest brand name I know of due to its phonetical ressemblance with some words from my native tongue.