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ALONGSIDE a well-known obsession with nominative determinism, a subject Old Scientist covered on 19 May, New Scientist鈥榮 Feedback column has had a few other fascinations down the years. One of the most popular has been strange product names.

鈥淏rand names are big business,鈥� we wrote. So why, after weeks of brainstorming, pre-planned pre-planning meetings and signing-off sessions, are new products so often desperately misnamed? Who thought that Fartek babywear, Krapp toilet paper, Bums biscuits, Nora Knackers crackers or Dribly lemonade might succeed?

Of course, one could argue that these were products from nations where English isn鈥檛 the first language 鈥� which indeed they were 鈥� and we should cut them some slack. But our immature side just finds them too amusing. In the early 1990s, we discovered Cyprus鈥檚 Cock Drops cocktail bitters, Spain鈥檚 Arses red wine, Germany鈥檚 Plops savoury snacks and an aftershave from France called Kevin. Did we say childish? Well it鈥檚 true.

It went on with readers sending more examples from their travels. There is a toilet paper in Germany called Bum, a tool shop in Pagnacco, Italy, called Smut, a soft drink in Ghana called Pee Cola and a French high-fibre breakfast cereal (with, we must presume, excellent laxative properties) called Crapsy. Later, we learned that French cereals are in bitter competition: Crapsy had a rival called Plopsies.

The Dutch, meanwhile, appeared to have an entire marketing strategy devoted to names that play badly to English speakers. When you consider how well most Dutch people speak English, we can only conclude that this is deliberate. Examples include a floor surface called Poxy, a fizzy drink called Prik and aftershaves called Vaccine and Gammon.

So after all that puerile giggling, it was perhaps beneficial to hear that the tables can be turned. In 1993, reader Johan Hjelm of Sweden pointed out that the name of the respected (now former) UK pharmaceuticals firm Fisons sounds the same as the Swedish word for fart.

Sad to admit, but more examples of bizarrely named products are always welcomed.