1) The last name of the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant is pronounced like "cunt". How do they give a philosophy Kant course in the US?
2) Why do French girls have to say "bit twiddling" but American girls need to be protected from "Coq"?
3) The reason for the rename initiative is apparently a misunderstanding by an Uber driver when hearing the word. I'd humbly suggest not to use the word in a cab, just as you wouldn't say "I'm taking a Kant course in college" in a cab. Context matters.
4) It is not up to Americans to eradicate European words in European projects.
This is the case of one project changing its name because the reality of using that name causes frustration and embarrassment FOR THEM. It's not even about politics or pressure external to the project. They are just annoyed and want to change it and its theirs so they can. What exactly is your beef here lol.
The coq-club archives seem to have vanished, but a Reddit thread suggests that the initial thread title was:
"Why is the Coq logo made to look like a penis? This year, I had a student point out to me the 'flesh-colored logo with what looks like a mushroom top'."
Apart from the fact that the logo looks like a strange chess figure at best, this qualifies as extreme pressure in the current climate. In such discussions only one side speaks up freely in public and maintains that this is the general view of the project.
If 100% of the Coq contributors are genuinely annoyed (i.e. without having had a "little chat" with their university administrations), the situation is different. I doubt that this can be established, as no one has voiced support on discourse at all and the coq-club archives are no longer public.
2) The language of computer science is English. A technical word being offensive in English has much more weight than being offensive in another language, because it affects so much more people.
3) Yes, ideally, people would abstain from snickering about the unintended sound of Coq in conversations. Unfortunately, that is just not happening. "harassment or awkward situations, reports about students (notably women) who ended up not learning / using Coq because of its name." You will not be able to completely eradicate all those awkward situations involving "Coq" by pointing out that "context matters".
4) Coq is very widely used in an English context, seeing as computer science itself is largely English. When (presumably) the majority of users of a project is American, it does make sense to cater to them to some extent.
We should not downplay the absolutely real problems that Coq's current name causes.
When they became famous, US corporations started monetizing them, buying contributors and slowly dictated everything.
Languages like Python, which started in Europe and have at least 75% non-US contributions, are completely governed in the US. European and Asian opinions are ignored and sometimes derided, all while pretending to foster an "inclusive" environment.
Projects moving to GitHub have caused many contributors to stop. No one cares, because the "right people" use GitHub and the others don't matter.
Perhaps Academia is isolated from these issues to some extent, but make no mistake: In the current climate a renaming is highly political; in my opinion French students should revolt to protect their identity, it is the straw that breaks the Caml's back.
Rather ethnocentric, don't you think? I don't think the rest of the world, which outnumbers the English speaking world, will take kindly to such reasoning.
Welp. I think this is a good move.
It gets worse: a standard technique for proving correctness of imperative programs is called Hoare Logic, after C.A.R. Hoare, the inventor of Quicksort. And of course there is an implementation of Hoare logic in Coq.
I was asked a while back to give a talk about this stuff at work. It's maybe a relief that it didn't happen, since I dreaded having to say these names in today's environment. My plan was to put the slides up first (with the names and their origins on them), before saying the names out loud.
I don't think "coq" is slang for penis in French, though my French is at best rudimentary. I'm familiar with "verge" ("rod") and a few similar terms being used that way in French, but the English connotation of Coq's name is coincidental, I think.
The current name makes me think of A. Le Coq, an Estonian brewery. Hopefully, my association will have no impact on their naming decision :)
