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| Aire Scott - Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
"Nike" -well, when the brand really started getting momentum in the market in Lebanon in the 80s people would always eyeroll. In case you don't know it, nike is slang for "screw" - you know, the sexual act not the tool (sorry, no pun). Siri means penis in Georgian and Lumia is slang for prostitute in Spanish and the list goes on.
Which brings us to Kylie Jenner and her son (from rapper Travis Scott), when the baby arrived it was called "Wolf" - except that the parents decided it was not a fitting name for the boy. After a long debacle the parents decided the boy's name - and it was revealed with his face only very lately - is "Aire". The issue?
If Nike was not enough, Nike Air was a literal double whammy. "Nike" - I already explained what it was, "Air" well this is what you do the nike with... So the poor boy - and I mean the Jenner/Scott offspring - has a very strange name in Arabic. Not to pick on the boy or harass him or what not but seriously....
My heart goes to all the Arabic news anchors who had to talk about former prime minister of France Jean-Marc Ayrault. Because in slang his family name literally means "his tool".
All this reminds me of French author Marcel Pagnol - in his lovely "la gloire de mon pere" (my father's glory) - he tells the story of how his aunt Rose forced her husband to be called "Jules" rather than his original name "Thomas" because she heard that in the countryside people called Thomas their chamber pot, not knowing that Jules is an even more widely adopted euphemism for the same object.
So if Wolf did not work, and Aire did not, I wonder what the boy's third iteration will be.