How we renamed our Design Converter to Magical Ass

So here we go, our rebranding is done. New logo, new domain, what could go wrong.

We provide a tool to convert design files between Figma, XD, Sketch, Figma, PDF and more and have recently rebranded it from "XD2Sketch" to "Magicul". We started out as a simple tool to allow users to import XD files in Sketch hence the name XD2Sketch but soon added more features. The name just didn't make sense anymore. Magicul initially seemed to be a great name, but turned out to be a bit of an interesting pick when translated to French.

We've sent out a newsletter to our customers to let them know about the changes and here's what one of our users replied:

Hey folks,

While I understand that you guys probably hope to operate primarily in English, I think it needs to be mentioned that your brand name "Magicul" in french, literally means "Magical ass"... but the real kicker is the .io of the domain, which literally means input & output...

So here goes the bad news... The entire french community is reading your brand name - literally - as: Magical ass (dot) in & out.

And then there's the logo itself... which is a hole with a hat.

Christ. You can't make this stuff up. This is ugh, umm, a brutally unfortunate brand?...lol

I'm in Quebec, Canada, where french is dominant and so I'm keenly aware of this - and so are my partners, colleagues and friends. We all had a good laugh.

Don't know what else to say...?

Bonne chance mes amis!

Have a good one,

- A fan of your work in Montreal.

You can checkout our website here: https://magicul.io

I just thought this was too hilarious to not share.

I think we're already too invested. The SEO took a big hit and I think changing it again would be even worse for our organic traffic. On top of that I think its hilarious and I you know what they say "There's no such thing as bad publicity".

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117297

Running "Magicul" through it does indeed give a warning for the french meaning.

Reminds me of the Mitsubishi Pajero which translates to "wanker" in Spanish. Or a long time ago we named projects after mountains in the alps. Once we got to "Wank" luckily our born in England intern told us that maybe this wasn't a good idea.