It’s a downer of a day, but here’s something we can all get a little chuck at: in Japan, Apple might need to change the name of iOS 5’s incredible new Siri voice control assistant. Why? Because in Japanese, Siri sounds an awful lot like a bottom.
According to The Next Web, the word “Siri” in Japan sounds very, very similar to the word “Shiri” (尻), which means, well, a person’s posterior. Buttocks. Ass.
Even more hilariously, a Japanese search for “4S Siri” in Google causes the search engine to ask you if you’re sure you’re not looking for bottom instead?
Pretty funny. Of course, Siri isn’t actually coming to Japan quite yet — it is only launching in English, French, German — so Apple has some time to deal with the branding issues yet.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
