I am looking for a name for an idea that I have for a website. It is a niche hobby, but there is a greek word for it that most people don’t know. Lets say its a book club and the word was Bibliophile or a music club called Melophile.
Would you, if you did not know the meaning, think of it as something sexual, or maybe even something bad? I am nervous that users might relate it to pedophile even though that is just one of, (but maybe best known) philias there are
When I hear “audiophile”, I truly never think about licking the banana-plugs, so nope.
There are also some popular YT channels like Computerphile and Numberphile
to be frank, “Numberwang” is more titillating than “Numberphile”
That’s Numberwang!
Cinephile is another common term.
Yeah another user mentioned those two too. The interesting part is that they have used a mixture of english and greek. For example Numberphile uses the enlish word “number” instead of the proper Arithmophile. I wonder if this is to make it easier to understand
The reason that a linguist would give is that -phile has become a somewhat productive suffix in English, so it is not constrained to Greek roots.
Just remember that the average Lemmy user is a bit more literate than the average kneejerk reaction idiot. Id say theres nothing wrong with it but you can probably come up with something a little more catchy and clever if you put your mind to it.
I think you are right. I might go with a mixture of English and Greek like an other user mentioned (computerphile, numberphile, bookphile) even though they are not proper.
I honestly think Bibliophile is used commonly enough that most people would understand it. Not quite as much as Audiophile, but you do hear it. It also sounds, info, much better than Bookphile.
“Audiophile” has never before brought to mind the concept of “pedophile”.
In fact, note the way we shorten the word: “pedo”.
I wouldn’t worry about it. But I’m autistic, so the way my brain processes these words might be different than an NT’s brain.
Mostly I think it’s only going to be a problem for people who are looking for trouble, and you can’t really avoid problems with those people.
Only dumb people will
That’s a large group though.
Yeah but fuck em
where do you think they keep coming from??
Sorry my bad. Butt fuck them
Phile is pretty much the best known greek suffix out there. It gets tagged onto most hobbies, so you don’t have to worry about it being defaulted to sexual matters. Tbh, most of the paraphilias are so obscure that nobody without an interest in the field is going to know them the way -phobias are. I mean, can you name the other chronophilias besides pedophilia? Did you even know that there were others? Most people really only know one or two sexual-philias at most, where they’ll have heard of a dozen or so non sexual ones.
But, just tacking phile or philia onto a word can be clunky, so you might end up with it not working well anyway.
Yeah I shared a link in an other comment about this. There seem to be quite a lot, and most of them end with “philia”. This is also my main concern. That most will have heard the suffix used with one of those
It really depends. I think -phile tends to make me think non-sexual, and -philia makes me think sexual. Probably just because of how the words are used.
People tend to be willing to describe themselves as an x-phile, but psychological or legal literature are more likely to say something like “a person with x-philia” or “displaying traits of x-philia”.
I assume the people who automatically think of something negative or sexual when hearing the word „phile“ are the same people you don’t want to associate with in the first place. Their opinion is worthless and can be ignored. Don’t waste your time with other people’s ignorance.
I’d agree with you, but if it is for the purpose of educating people, I wouldn’t want to scare them away because they would feel its a risky click when linked to…
Yeah, I feel you. Maybe there is a case to be made here. But I think those who are ignorant choose to be so and it’s a lost cause. You probably shouldn’t listen to me. I think it’s great of you to consider something like this.
You could do some kind of A/B testing. Use some “phile” name in half your links, some more semantophobic name in the other half, and see if the phile thing results in less clickthrough.
I’d simply guess “lover, liker, fond of”, without any obligatory sexual connotation. Even if I don’t recognise the first part, as in… say, “wugphile” (“wug” is just a nonsense placeholder).
I have some interest in chemistry and after a while when I hear “phile” my first thought is “they are attracted to water”.
So… you are a chemophile!! See what I mean? It kind of sounds negative without it being the case.
That part where it sounds negative is happening in your own head.
I think if you step back and evaluate this thread, you’ll find we’re all telling you it’s a non-problem.
My advice is to not worry about it and move on.
And, long shot, maybe take a look at your social surroundings and see if you’ve been in a group of pathological offense-takers. Hanging out with these types can result in your seeing the world as a minefield of unintended social insult.
It really seems to me like the thing you’re worried about is a non-issue.
i like water
Nah, I just assume it’s someone that really likes something. Kind of like saying food-porn but even less sexual. Like Audiophile is common parlance that evokes no sexual meaning.
Nah it’s okay. Anglophile doesn’t mean you want to bang me.
Unless…?
Unless you’re acute anglo
Not necessarily, it depends on whether I recognize the first part of the word. For example, I dont immediately think “audiophile,” is negative or sexual in nature.
Nope.
I would understand that it just means a connoisseur of something, but you could always change the spelling to “file” to make it more digital-y and even less associated with problematic obsessions.
This is actually interesting! I wanted to use “files” to start with, like “Flower-Files” but the domain was taken. So i thought flowerphiles could be a fun twist. The true word would be Anthophile though, (or Botanophile for plants) and people would not necessarilly know this (this is btw an example and not the actual wordplay that I am working on atm)
Could also just double-domain it, anthophile.com && ILikeFlowers.com or something like that. Is there a “flowers” TLD? ILike.flowers
So I only use the anthophile as an examble. It’s not that, but I’d rather not share the actual word as I’m sure some jerk will go out and buy both before I decide LOL
It’s a good point though! I might consider doing both, although only one can host the actual software and using both would be ineffective brand wise. I think that I have kind of settled on using the English prefix and phile suffix
No. There’s plenty of common examples of that suffix being used in a non-sexual non-negative context. For example: someone who enjoys reading books is called a bibliophile, there’s also the youtube channels Computerphile and Numberphile.
yeah I used the bibliophile example in my text above. ,Computerphile and Numberphile, are mixed words of english/greek. It is actually interesting, for examble, that they have used Numberphile instead of Arithmophile, wich would be the actual word. My concern is when people don’t recognize the prefix and only recognize the suffix, if that will be different
