Well, there’s also the Microsoft “Windows OneCare” program from back mid 2020’s:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/windows_onecare.html
From comments on that blog piece:
“The best thing about the marketing name “Onecare” is the almost French pronunciation used when promoting it 
”
To be fair, the traditional American typewriter didn’t have diacritics at all. Before Unicode came along, diacritics on computers were hit-and-miss at best with a slew of incompatible character sets. Now that the character set problem is sorted out, it ought not to be a problem, except that standard English keyboard layouts still don’t have proper diacritics. Workarounds include the US International layout (dead keys for diacritics) or the Compose key in the Linux/X world (there’s also WinCompose for Windows users). There’s also a US Russian layout, but not a generic US Cyrillic layout that would support Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Yakut, etc.
In general, I find US International to be burdensome when typing only in English, since the single and double quotes are dead keys. The Compose key is particularly spiffy. Tap Compose (mapped to the right-side Alt for me) and then 1 and 2, and you get: ½. Compose L hyphen: £. Compose single-quote e: é. Compose < c: č. There are some less-intuitive ones: Compose # E gets ♫; # for music notes, E for double eighth note on a beam.
Also, the Honda Fit got renamed to the Jazz in Europe, to avoid a bit of a faux pas in Nordic languages.
The only reason I can think of for doing likewise in Australia is to distinguish between official and grey-market imports (especially used JDMs).
Well, don’t scoff at anglophones. In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a lot of people still have problems with their official documents, since the fonts (ESPECIALLY IN ALL CAPS) don’t support diacritics. I vaguely remember a feature about a refugee from the Balkan wars trying to proof their identity in Switzerland, and consequently trying to sue the authorities to make it possible to include diacritics in Swiss passports . As far as I remember, Swiss authorities couldn’t file the paperwork in the process of them becoming a Swiss citizen, more than 20 years after arriving…
ok, this one’s iffy, but i once heard of the famous Capt. Kirk actor’s ill-fated line of women’s underwear called Shatner Pants…
[already showing myself out]
I have actually purchased this
We are, all of us, pajeros!
(Did you look at buying one, too?)
“Nova” is indeed a word in Spanish. It means the same thing as it does in English, a blown-up star (a star that has “gone nova”). You seem to have missed the link in my message to the “nova” page on the Spanish-language Wikipedia.
This was my take on it as well. Not blunders, just words that don’t mean the same thing in English that they do in the language of the market the product is intended for.
Character Map works well for this and it’s built into Windows; no extra software needed.
Yeah that one is definitely an urban legend. There’s plenty of brands in Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries that incorporate the word “Nova”, and the Nova automobile sold just fine in Mexico.
The best analog I’ve to demonstrate the absurdity of this is along the lines of, “I can’t buy a dining room furniture set called ‘Notable’ because it doesn’t include a table!”
And Pocari Sweat is delicious, so I don’t care what it’s called.
Wait, that’s an unfortunate name? I’d expect it to sell rather well.
That Kum-onit looks like it was around long before “Jam on it” was a song. Long lasting German products are not blunders.
Well, well, well. I did not know that. But the Nova was also made in the Vauxhall works in Luton, about 10 miles away. Only car I have ever owned from new.
