Cuil,<\/a> Cuil ffs? Repress a shudder at the name. It’s a (relatively) new search engine. It’s good, although it’s had a bit of a critical drubbing. It’s much prettier than google. Its results make a lot of sense. It’s not stuffed with sponsored links or spam links or dominated by top-ten-authority corporate results. So I think I like it, although I’ve only used it on test basis.<\/p>\n

I also really like Ubuntu. Of course, any Linux version is admirable. and Ubuntu is more admirable than most.<\/p>\n

I am just going to have a pointless rant about the branding – calling things ethnic-sounding names to make perfectly good and worthy things sound just that bit more credible.<\/p>\n

The wikipedia<\/a> entry doesn’t do much to disspell any impulse to sneer at the Cuil name:<\/p>\n

The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson’s husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore stories involving a character called Finn McCuill. The company says that Cuil is Irish for knowledge and hazel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s “Irish ancestry” in the sense of “American Irish”, then? (One Irish great-great grandparent and an Irish surname qualify any American as Irish. Although I remain to be convinced that Costello really counts, here….)<\/p>\n

Wikipedia does some serious undercutting of the legitimacy of the Irish ethnic explanation for the brandname, from a standpoint of linguistics. Which feeds my instinctive prejudice against the word, the spelling and its supposed “cool” pronunciation.<\/p>\n

I used to get riled every time I saw claims that Ubuntu was the “African word for” something, as if Africa didn’t have more languages than any other continent in the world.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. (from Ubuntu.com<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to turn my pedantry against myself. That said “An<\/strong> African word for” not “The<\/strong> African word for”. Maybe I have been misjudged Unbuntu. I do a cuil search for “ubuntu is african for.” The first page is whole string of official ubuntu links, none of which say it is the<\/strong> African word for anything. In fact, many of the definitions that turn up are reasonably precise, a Zulu word and a South African philosophy.<\/p>\n

My bad. I must have imagined the “African word for” phrase, misremembering the blurb from the old distro I have somewhere.<\/p>\n

But google and cuil do both unveil an apparent subgenre of geek humour based on the misremembered “Ubuntu is African for”<\/p>\n

Ubuntu is African for ‘Can’t configure Debian’. (typical link: Ubuntu forum post)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed. ubuntu is african for ” I CANT CONFIGURE SLACKWARE”
\n(typical link: Another forum<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ubuntu is African for “time sucker”, right? (link: I-phone blog forum<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ubuntu is African for \u201cstruggles to install mouses\u201d. (from information rain<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most off-the-wall is
\nUbuntu is African for sharks with freaking laser beams on its head. (from animetro<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Am I beginning to see a pattern, here? I’ll have to try it.<\/p>\n

Cuil is Irish for “excuse to use a disgustingly lame pun in a blog title”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sorry.)<\/p>\n

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    Cuil, Cuil ffs? Repress a shudder at the name. It’s a (relatively) new search engine. It’s good, although it’s had a bit of a critical drubbing. It’s much prettier than google. Its results make a lot of sense. It’s not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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