I mean... I _do_ think that language sensitivities are overblown these days. E.g. the majority of women participants did not "agree or strongly agree" that NIPS should become NeurIPS, yet it did.
GIMP and Git are words that most non-native English speakers don't have a strong association with. So they get a pass in most of the world.
But cock is as universal a swear word as you will find on this planet.
If I do a retreat in the village of Fucking, and write a compiler there, and then call it TFC -- the Fucking compiler, I know what I am doing.
I am German. German culture does not have the Anglo Saxon obsession with swear words to begin with. The US/British obsession with keeping dirty words from children's ears is a never-ending source of amusement for me.
I think you missed my point. "As universal as you will find" does not mean universal. It means There is nothing "more universal" - no word understood as a swear word by more people. There is no absolutely universal swear word. Obviously.
But English is spoken by a lot of people, most of them not native, most of whom don't have a native word that sounds like cock as a first association.
GIMP and Git are words that most non-native English speakers don't have a strong association with. So they get a pass in most of the world.
But cock is as universal a swear word as you will find on this planet.
If I do a retreat in the village of Fucking, and write a compiler there, and then call it TFC -- the Fucking compiler, I know what I am doing.