New Nokia phone name, Lumia, means ‘prostitute’ in Spanish

Apple’s much-touted Siri may sound like the Japanese word for buttocks, but that’s no big deal given that iPhone users are unlikely to give a rat’s backside about the coincidence.

Nokia customers, on the other hand, may have more of a problem with their new Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 phones, especially if they’re up on their Spanish, a language in which the word lumia apparently means prostitute. (I say apparently only because I speak no Spanish and there are some doubts being expressed on Twitter, where chatter about the situation is gaining steam as I type.)

(Steve Jobs and his gadgets … in LEGO)

Here’s the translation offered by Yahoo Education:

This translator also makes the lumia/prostitute connection.

Rosa Golijan at msnbc.com has also done some searching and found this bit of interesting information via Google Books:

Google’s clever book-searching tool pulls up a German text called “Der Gitanismo im spanischen Argot” by a fellow named Bernhard Helzle-Drehwald. (The title loosely translates as “The Gypsy in Spanish slang.”) This particular book explains that the word is the result of Gypsy dialects slipping into the Spanish language. It is not a particularly commonly used term and only appears in Spanish dialects with heavy Gypsy influences.

This may explain why the folks at Nokia did not realize that they were giving their latest products an awkward name, but I still don’t see it as an excuse – someone should’ve cracked open an etymology book or twenty at some point during the product naming process and researched things.

Could Nokia really have failed to do this basic research? Or, if we want to get conspiratorial here, might its marketers have recognized the value of what would be an easily predictable flurry of press attention?

I’ve contacted Nokia for comment and will let you know when I get a response.

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