this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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It's not that bad. It's just German for flea market. And English speakers shouldn't have an issue with at least "Markt". Not far from a cognate.
Definitely better names but I think the bigger hurdle is getting the critical mass to get something like marketplace to work in the fediverse even with the perfect name.
Yep. It’s kind of annoying when people see everything through an “english” lense and assume anything that isn’t made to work for english speakers won’t work…
Op has a point. Even English names that succeed internationally are somewhat bound by the ability of speakers of other languages to spell and pronounce the name. Y'all are here acting like what they're saying is hateful or something...
Its even more important to use various word from various language.
English as default also resulting American culture as the most prominent culture.
Newer generation are more acceptable to outside culture, so this will be work. Not to forget, the rest of non-English society already operate in multi language society and get exposed for various culture.
Years ago, people heavily localized Angliscize a lot of Asian media, but now, people are more accepting foreign naming convention. Just take a look at various FOSS porject in Japanese, Hindi, Persia, or Finnish.
No one is saying you cannot have a good German name. Uber is an American company. Shit company but great name. Comes from German and translates to other linguistic communities fairly well
Uber isn't a German word tho?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uber
Right, über is a word. "uber" is very much not. The points aren't decoration or a pronunciation guide, they signify a different letter.
It's like saying that Spanish people call their country Espana.
Are you really going to argue this? Those accent marks aren't in all languages, which is mainly why they removed them. If you want to claim this isn't from the German word then you need to explain where it came from.
Removing the accent marks makes it such that the word isn't German anymore, just German-inspired. It would have to be written "Ueber" instead.
You know, like a Mr. Böing founding the company Boeing.
And yet I always knew that it came from german and when I looked up the etymology that was confirmed correct. I honestly have no idea why people want to have a "conversation" like this
Not only is the etymology on my side, search engines also easily find several articles saying the company Uber got their name from a German word.
Inspired, yes. But uber is still not a German word.
Imagine if I founded a company called "Tougt" and claimed this is an English word. Not inspired by, is. Who needs the letter 'h' anyways?
I fail to see how it matters that a word commonly known as "german" is not directly German but instead is one step removed.
They could have just as easily pulled another easy-to-grok word from German and slightly changed the spelling.
Those arguing about this technicality here are missing the point.
'uber' is an English word with a German ethnology. 'über' is a German word. That's like saying iceberg is German. u and ü are different letters. They are pronounced differently and change the meaning of words (e.g. 'Schuppe' means scale, 'Schüppe' means shovel)
...I don't know what point you're making. The word came from german, and the changing of the letter only goes to my point. The word was easily simplified to be used outside of German.
You're in a thread complaining about a software using a German name for it's German meaning (Flohmarkt means flea market). Your example for a 'good German name' is an English word that has German origins. Don't you see how those are different?
I think you're splitting hairs and it's not helpful. I have only ever known "Uber" as a German word and you saying it isn't one won't change my or others' experience of it as such.
Not only is the etymology on my side, search engines also easily find several articles saying the company Uber got their name from a German word.
Uber is a loan word. Doesn't matter how your perceive it, that doesn't make it a more German. So is iceberg.
There is absolutely no way in which this even matters a slight bit. In-fucking-sufferable and entirely self unaware.
You're in a thread complaining about a software using a German name for it's German meaning. Your example for a 'good German name' is an English word that has German origins.
Also, the founders are Canadian and American, not Germans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber
Something, something über alles...
über? which you'd spell ueber, if you can't type ü
But telling a friend about this starts with the name. Simple names are easier. And that would just start with making it short. Single syllable being best.
Like eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon?
Isn’t this more like the software you’d use to build whatever local (but maybe federated) site? Like, you don’t ask your friend if they’ve been on Shopify or Squarespace lately.
Yeah, possibly. Depends -- if the data is federated between instances (which I assumed) you could have access to the whole world's market and it would still be useful if there was a feature that allowed you filter out locations you're not currently interested in.
Yeah, would also be nice to be able to combine multiple local markets.
german looks notoriously complicated for people who dont speak it
The sentence structure is kinda wonky coming from English, but the vocab isn't bad. There are tons of cognates.
what some people don't get is that "flea market" is also a bad name. floh just makes it look and sound worse and it's harder to parse let alone understand and therefore remember.