You can take that “EU website” broad, as in: any website in the EU.
I just tried to order train tickets in Portugal. Not only do they ask for my passport number, they also ask for your tax id. I will, of course, totally give them my SSN for a train ride… It’s a mandatory field too. People on Reddit say you can just fill in anything, it doesn’t matter, but I hate that kind of uncertainty.
Better get used to that. Nearly every time you buy something in Portugal they'll ask you for your tax id so that they can print it on the receipt. This is because this is something you can use for some tax breaks later and also there is some lottery going on I think? Though obviously the original reason for it to exist is to combat tax fraud.
This is also entirely optional for those kind of purchases, and meaningless if you don't have one (which you probably aren't going to if you are just a tourist passing through the country) so you should just not fill that field. I seriously doubt it is mandatory.
Your initial response made it sound as if Xiaomi did nothing wrt chip design and all the hail goes to "ARM engineers" which is simply not true. Had that been true we would have dozens of chip designers which we don't.
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.
I love the JERKER desk that I bought 26 years ago, so I assume this rule must be younger than that.
Pax is another one that violates the rule that someone pointed out lower. Also Malm is a surname which is another violation of the rule (one of the characters in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was named, if I recall correctly, Stefan Malm). I remember reading the books with my then-wife and she said it was like reading an IKEA catalog. I thought she was referring to the character/place names, but it turned out that the second book had a long section where the titular girl furnishes an apartment from IKEA and—that chapter was exactly like reading an IKEA catalog.
When it comes to names like "MALM", it's likely incidental.
"Malm" is a a noun with several meanings, most notably "metal ore", but also some (more archaic) meanings like "area with sandy soil" or "city outskirts".
The fact that "Malm" also happens to be a surname is secondary; Swedish has a lot of surnames that are simply ordinary nouns or adjectives. A completely literal "No surnames, ever" rule would probably be quite a bit too restrictive. I suspect that the actual internal rule is "No names that are primarily (or solely) surnames", or something to that effect.
Currently 6833 people in Sweden have the last name "Malm", and some large fraction of them were born before 2005 (could not be bothered to check how many, sorry!).
Yes, they also sold a toilet brush named "VIREN". In Germany this is the plural of virus.
And some year ago Danes complained IKEA named carpets and runner after danish towns but never something "better".
Similar trivia with a Swedish connection: the original name of the Honda Fit/Jazz was Honda Fitta, but then they found out it's the Swedish word for "cunt" so that was a no-go.
I'm a Swede and I knew a guy named Jerker growing up. I always wondered if his parents gave him that name to mess with him. In Swedish "j" is pronounced as the English "y", so I think they could have at least spelled it as Yerker.
That's my name. When I asked my parents about it, they just said they liked it and didn't really think about any possible negative sides.
Introducing yourself to English speakers can be interesting... often times people won't catch the name when pronounced the Swedish way, so you end up quickly clarifying it by using the English pronunciation. Sometimes a hand gesture is needed.
I didn’t even know the name for the longest time. It’s only when I wanted to buy some extensions that I realized the cult status of that model, and that’s not (just) because of the name. It’s a truly great design and a shame that it was discontinued many years ago.
I just tried to order train tickets in Portugal. Not only do they ask for my passport number, they also ask for your tax id. I will, of course, totally give them my SSN for a train ride… It’s a mandatory field too. People on Reddit say you can just fill in anything, it doesn’t matter, but I hate that kind of uncertainty.
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