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Remove offensive name #12

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CaryJ opened this issue Aug 27, 2019 · 3 comments
Closed

Remove offensive name #12

CaryJ opened this issue Aug 27, 2019 · 3 comments
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@CaryJ
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CaryJ commented Aug 27, 2019

We use this library to generate random names in the demo environment of our product. A customer was recently offended by the name "Rivka Shyrock", because of Rivka being a Jewish first name, and Shyrock being very close to Shylock, which is a character in Shakespeare that is offensive to Jews.
I suggest replacing "Shyrock" with some other last name.
I understand it's hard to foresee possible combinations of names that could be considered offensive in various cultures. We have worked around this in our code, but want to make you aware of the potential issue.

@CaryJ
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CaryJ commented Aug 27, 2019

The last name concerned is actually "Shryock"

@jkonecki jkonecki self-assigned this Aug 28, 2019
@aliostad aliostad reopened this Aug 28, 2019
@aliostad
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aliostad commented Aug 28, 2019

Hi, the last thing we would want is to offend anyone. And change is simple, yet for the reasons I will explain, it is not the right thing as a matter of principle.

The data is the exact copy of names collected from 1990 US census:
1990 US Census

image

These are real names of the real people - offensive or not they are real. We also have the names Adolfo and even Adolph which I am sure reminiscent of a dark character in the history. Yet, all in all, name of the people themselves should not be offensive, let alone similarity.

Is this an acceptable explanation which these names are real names? I guess if you could explain the origin of the names, this misunderstanding could have been avoided.

@CaryJ
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CaryJ commented Aug 28, 2019

Thank you for the explanation. I understand if you don't want to change your name list.

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