Photo author, Reuters
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will now be called Meta
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Facebook’s announcement that the company will now be called Meta has sparked unexpected reactions in Israel and Ukraine. The fact is that the word “meta” in Hebrew means “dead”, and for many Ukrainians it is associated with the name of an Internet portal that was created back in the late 1990s (in Ukrainian, “meta” is a “task” or “target”).
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On Thursday, the head of Facebook announced the renaming of the company, but its social networks (Facebook, Instagram and the WatsApp messenger) will continue to be named. According to the official version, the new name better matches the current activities of the company. In particular, Zuckerberg intends to create a “metaverse” – an online world in which people can work, play games and communicate, often using virtual reality headsets.
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The word, which is pronounced “meta”, in Hebrew means the feminine form of the adjective “dead”. As a result, the hashtag #FacebookDead (“Facebook is dead”) even appeared on Twitter.
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In this regard, the Israeli group of volunteers “Zak”, which is engaged in rescue in emergency situations, tweeted: “Do not worry, we are coming to the rescue.” Another Twitter user wrote: “The Jewish community will laugh at this name for many years to come.”
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Ukrainian Internet users joke that Mark Zuckerbeg borrowed the name from the portal Meta.uawhich has existed in the country since the late 1990s. The editorial staff of the portal itself posted on Facebook the news about the renaming of the company with the explanation: “No, we have nothing to do with this.”
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Photo author, facebook.com/meta.ua
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In the Ukrainian segment of the Internet, a lot of messages also appeared, the authors of which laugh at the coincidence, and some even record the founder and head of the Facebook company, renamed Meta, as Ukrainians.
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Russian users did not stand aside either. In Russia there is a service for the selection of psychologists, which is also called “Meta”. And, of course, when discussing the new name of the company, there was a quote “I am such a post-post, I am such a meta-meta” from the song of the singer Monetochka.
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KFC’s “Bite Your Fingers” and Other Bad Matches
Facebook is not the only company to be trapped in the brand name by not taking into account the peculiarities of the translation of the new name into the languages of the world.
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When KFC decided to enter the Chinese market in the 1980s, the company’s motto “You Lick Your Fingers” was not well received by native Chinese speakers. Translated from the mandarin, this slogan sounds much rougher – “Bite off your fingers.” However, this did not greatly affect the company’s revenue, which has since become one of the largest fast food chains in the country.
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The KFC slogan sounded very different to the Chinese than it did to English-speaking customers.
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Rolls-Royce was forced to change the name of its Silver Mist before launching it on the German market, as Mist is German for excrement. Instead, the car was named Silver Shadow.
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Photo author, Reuters
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Rolls-Royce had to change the name of one of the cars, as it sounded far from attractive in German.
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Obscenities from Nokia and Honda
When Nokia launched its Lumia phone in 2011, some customers did not react at all the way the manufacturers wanted them to. In Spanish, Lumia is synonymous with prostitute, although it is found only in dialects with strong Gypsy influence.
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Automobile concern Honda was a little more fortunate. The company almost named its new car Fitta, which is the vulgar name for vagina in Swedish. But apparently, the problem with the translation was discovered early on, and as a result, the machine became known as Jazz.
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