I received an email from my brother in Massachusetts several days ago. It appears I have another niece on the way. He's started to cionsider names for her. I told him I'd put some thought onto it.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, a grapefruit seller has been denied permission to register a domain containing the Vietnamese word, buoi, for grapefruit. Vietnamese being a tonal language, the meanings of words can change dramatically depending on the tone - in this case, grapefruit or a slang word for penis (the difference, again?).
And today, I read that in another case:
A local law firm has sued the Vietnam Internet Information Centre for denying it the right to an internet domain name and then later granting rights to the name to a construction company.
The law firm Pham & Associates was denied approval from the Vietnam Internet Information Centre (VNNIC) to use the domain name internet.com.vn. It filed a lawsuit when VNNIC later allowed the Viet Xay Construction Co Ltd to register the name. - VietnamNet
Which brings me back to my new niece. It may take a a while to chew on a new middle name for you. For now, I'll tell my brother to refer to her as something really bad until she's born as they do in some cultures here, to keep the ghosts (or the governments) away.
Sources
Reuters. No 'buoi' please, we're Vietnamese
Yahoo. Grapefruit or penis? Vietnam accents the difference
BBC. Vietnam bans fruity website name
Posted by on February 14, 2006 11:00 AM | Permalink

hahahha, I read about this a couple days ago. Bu'o'i *grapefruit} is totally different from buoi *penis( which is a slang commonly used in the north(
if i were the government, i'd also ban "lon", "chim", "cac" .com to protect the virginity of the vietnamese language on the web