The best–although not the fault of the namers–is the “Gay Cock” brand of foodstuffs (which can still be purchased in some places).
I mean, having one word out of your name go south on you is one thing, but both…
Ah yes, the Ikea thing. Here’s the story. They named a children’s bed model the “Gutvik”, which means “good fuck” in German.
In our “International Foods” aisle of our local supermarket, they have Cock Flavored Soup. Hey, if I ain’t swalloing the real stuff, I ain’t swallowing the imitation stuff either!
One that always gets me is on a silly wedding message board I visited while I was planning my Special Princess Day. (ugh) They call their bridesmaids BMs. Now, having worked with kids, I know this term. I have used this term. And never once when I had to deal with a BM was there a woman in an ugly pink dress waiting for me in the bathroom with a bouquet of flowers. Not even once. To me a BM is a bowel movement, so when one of the bridezillas over there would go on about how her BM was driving her nuts and doing a lousy job I always wanted to reply with “Gee, none of my turds has ever thrown me a bridal shower either and you don’t see me complaining!”
Granted I can’t prove it, but I remember reading in a Piers Anthony story collection (“Anthonology” I think) about how in the Japanese language Coca Cola translated phonetically to mean “bite the wax tadpole”. He’d had one of his stories translated to Japanese without authorization. He was presented the Japanese version, and being curious, he found a translator, who related the anectdote to him.
Actually, it’s “karupisu”.
Also, Snopes on the “bite the wax tadpole” story.
Did anyone mention the town in Austria called ‘Fucking’
There’s some truth to this. Actually, in Chinese, one of the possible readings of ko-ka-ko-la, is ‘bite the wax tadpole’, and it’s possible that some shopkeepers made up their own unofficial Coke signs using this reading (or one of the many other nonsense readings), but Coca-Cola Co. has never used it in any official signs or labels.
Snopes:
As for the Piers Anthony story, it’s possible, but I don’t think it would have been a Japanese translation. Japanese uses a purely phonetic writing system for foreign and made-up words, so ‘Coca-Cola’ doesn’t mean anything in Japanese but ‘Coca-Cola’.
What was that Sublight?
(I just love altavista babelfish)
You guys may have read about this new Mexican cuisine restaurant in California called ** C. O. Jones **. There was a bit of an uproar in the local hispanic community. Why? Because the name of the restaurant spells ** cojones **, which, in Spanish, means ** testicles **.
You guys can check out the menu for yourselves 
Cheese Rip-ums
Better go back and read that link again GB The towns of New Haven and West Hartford aren’t in California…
Hehe. C. O. Jones’ website has the phrase: “Ballsy Mexican Cuisine!”. They know very well what their name means. 
I just saw a tv commercial this week for a brand of car tires. The company is called “Kumho”.
Although I recently started a thread about this, I STILL cannot wrap my head around the idea that a childrens toy is named “the Fuzzy Pumper”.
Hey! Truth in advertising!
Laughable, yes… but this brand is Korean, and is properly pronounced (in Korean) “Koom-ho”.
Another Korean product that I found funny while in Korea was the “Dorco” line of shaving products. Haven’t seen them here in the US… huh.
Not to mention “Pokari Sweat” (a sports drink from Japan, I think). And many others.
Nope. It sounds like the words that mean “Goo Fuck.” The actual German words would be “Gute fick.”
Crap. Preview.
“Good …”
:smack: :smack: Well, what do I know, I’m in HK
Hello Board!
Ref. to Ikea’s Gudvik:
The name may have inspired some giggles from easily amused youths, but as Mort Furd already explained, it means nothing in German. The pronounciation to make it sound like a joined form of “ein guter Fick” could be described as “Gootfeeck”, written “Gutfick”. A more natural pronounciation for this obviously non-german word would be “Goodwick”, at least in Austria, but probably also in most regions of Germany.
Googling Gudvik I found no mention of the apology story in german sources, so I doubt its credibility (although at least one writer for a youth column found the name quite funny).
But some years ago I purchased a handtorch from Ikea, whose name was not funny, as far as I can recall, but what brought a smile to my face was the nice touch that the swedish word for handtorch is obviously “ficklampa”, and this is sufficiently close to “Ficklampe” to translate to “fuck-lamp”.