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Chinese Mistake on Smart Phone Name - It's a Lemon

It could be worse.
Electrolux at one time marketed its vacuum cleaners in the U.S. with the tag line: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."
 
We're just as bad - the electrolux but also the Chevy Nova which mysteriously didn't do very well in Latin America (Nova = No Va = Doesn't go)
 
At one time Mentor Graphics had a software product named Renoir, that is until the estate of Renoir sent them a legal letter to stop using their famous name for commercial purposes.
 
Maybe it's intentional ? This phone is pretty good but pretty cheap, maybe Lenovo wanted American customers not to buy it , only Asian ones ?
 
There are many examples of this. Some near and dear to our own EDA industry:
1. Mentor and Avanti are also names of condoms - of course, it is not sold by Mentor Graphics or Avanti Corp. (I will save all the related jokes for cocktail hour!)
2. In India they had a pickup truck/mini-van named Matador - which means a killer bull!
3. Ford Pinto - look up what it means in Brazil!
4. Coca-Cola may be a household phrase in the West, but Chinese know the soda company, transliterated into English, as 'ke kou ke le'. Ko-ka-ko-la was already taken by people who 'bite the wax tadpole'!
5. Then there is the famous Belgian chocolate named 'ISIS'!
6. Splunk - look up the meaning of this in British English!

So, you see, selecting a name for a company or product requires much more than knowledge of colloquial American English!
 
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