In other news, soon departing from Gothenburg

:cheeky:

Still, slim odds on the next flagship Elektron being the

:3lektron: Synthy McSynthface

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Yes please.

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Ha! Those who do these polls should be thankful the winner is something like this harmless piece of fun!

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Oh, man. We Gothenburgers have made these naming contests into an embarassing form of art. There’s even a word for it in the Swedish language and the rest of the country keeps mocking us for it.

Yet, the show must go on.

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What else have you all come up with?

And can you approximate the translation for us non-swedes?

I’ll give you three examples, for the love of god and humanity you won’t be able to take more.

First one - so there’s this industrial part of town that’s just abandoned. But piece by piece, the city’s transforming it into something very urban, and they’ve made part of the old port into an open pool, with a beach, training waters for optimist sailors, a sauna and stuff. All great. Then came the naming and after some pondering and a public contest, the pool was named Pöl Harbour.

Pöl, in Swedish, sounds very close to the American Pearl. And it’s also slang for puddle, toying with the idea that not only have we built a pool-area in the city, we’ve built it in the port area, and named it after a more famous port while also bringing in the idea of water into the name.

Sigh.

Next one - there’s a glass bridge that connects the central part of town with part of the bay. It’s a good bridge, you don’t need to cross five streets to get from the center to the bay and it’s also enclosed in glass, so even if the weather sucks, you can still use it. However, no one seems to, despite its brilliance. So it’s been named Tomgången.

Tom means empty. Gång means path or road. But also, the word Tomgång is the word for a car in neutral and not going anywhere. So the tunnel is aptly named after the fact that no one uses it, and also it’s a place for walking named after an idea that you’re not moving. At all.

Now, I promised you three. And three you will get

The last I’ll just make into a batch - hairdressers. They’re all over town, as they should be. And they all compete in funny names, except the ones that go all barber shop (that’s a thing here now), they have hipster cool names instead. But anyway, names such as Självfallet (which means Obviously in Swedish, but is also a word for hair that’s just perfect as it is - so you go to this place and you’ll obviously get perfect hair), or just visit Cut the Crap which doesn’t even try to be funny in Swedish or perhaps …

Actually, I’ll just stop here.

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that last one… :joy:

i was hoping you’d also mention the overarching term you use for the naming contests themselves. i trust it’s something a bit more viking than Meta McMetaface.

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It’s not a regulated thing. It’s so deep in our culture, these naming contests spring up from all kinds of directions and organisations.

For many years, we had this guy running the city called Göran Johansson. He was the strongest political leader around and whatever shots he couldn’t call from his public office, he just pulled strings behind the scenes to get shit done from there instead.

And he was the worst. This strong, idealistic and influential political leader, he took this naming thing so seriously, he came up with names on his own and just overruled committees and voting and contests and everything.

All this time, the country kept laughing at us. Still does. And not cause our names are funny.

understood, but…

after all this buildup, i’m afraid i won’t be able to rest until i learn this word of which you speak. :innocent:

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This is exactly what I was hoping for too! Like, on a much smaller scale, I had a guy I worked with, whose name became a verb. His name was (and probably still is) Gideon, and if you got “Giddeoned” it meant that you spent a ton of time figuring out the logistics for some project with tons of moving parts, only to have him show up and go “what? No, forget that, I need 13 boxes of paper and 6 camels. Let’s go!”

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Ah, now I get it. You’ll be disappointed, but the word is Göteborgshumor - translating into Gothenburg humour.

Which, however, generates a few interesting results if you google it. The concept is infamous even outside our borders.

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It’s got its own Wikipedia page!!

Its awesome that your town is known for being dryly witty about naming objects, buildings and landmarks.

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Haha, I suppose :blush:

Elektron’s not far behind, though. Takt means beat in Swedish, Rytm means Rythm. Won’t be long now till we see GlennBoard for their next keyboard or Halv Special for a two-voice A4 version (Halv Special means Half Special and is a local street dish with as much mashed potatoe as the size of the hot dog).

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Hairdressers should be awarded for their names. There’s a few in Falkirk including: “The Hairport”, “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow” and " Hair Dot Comb" (which only really works with a Scottish accent).

And for the Brits around here there’s a local curry house to me called Curry’s which makes me smile far more than it should

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I live in Washington DC, where everything is pretty strait laced. There is a hair place down from my office called “Cut 'n Edge,” but that’s about the best I can think of. However, I do like the name of the White House.

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haha! These are the sort of “bad but good” names that deserve attention!