I just ran across this hysterical LWN comment today.
It is not of any help to turn “offensiveness” off. In Russian language the root (stem) “eb” corresponds to English “f*ck”. Imagine how we the poor Russians feel looking at the name “ebuild”! How can we pronounce it on a street?!
Well, there are worse problems with “eb”. “eBuisines” translated to Russian “eCommerce”, but what can we do with “ebXML”?
There are also many other dirty words. Zope, well-known web-application server, looks in Russian as the Russian word “asshole”. And often abused by people who dislike Zope.
I think it is unavoidable. There are far too many dirty words in all languages.
Striving for greatness 