MSNBC Confirm that Nokia "Lumia" translates to "prostitue" in Spanish

Marketing people have a difficult job when it comes to naming their company products and services. They need to make sure that the branding they have thought up does not mean something offensive in a different language. Take for example Apple recent launch of the iPhone 4S. The highlight feature, Siri,translates to "ass" in Japanese. Likewise Gerber, the famous baby food brand in the United States, translates to "vomiting" in French. And in the Nordics Honda had to rename the Honda Fitta to the Honda Jazz, because Fitta is Swedish and Norwegian slang for vagina.

This is why handset makers like Nokia typically issue product names that are nothing more than a seemingly random string of digits. Two recent devices that Nokia have announced, the Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800, obviously have the prefix "Lumia" attached. In Finnish it means "snow", but in Spanish it unfortunately means "prostitute" according to MSNBC.