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
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
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
No, because I know what the suffix means.
But this is my question. The suffix means “to like” but this can be a good and a bad thing, depending on what the prefix is, like mentioned in the description. If you did not recognize the prefix would the average user assume the suffix to be sexual or negatively charged?
I dunno. Does this sound sexual to you?
Barantaphile
Well, I don’t think there is anything inherently sexual about the suffix, so no. But can’t speak for the average user.
Nah it’s okay. Anglophile doesn’t mean you want to bang me.
Unless…?
Unless you’re acute anglo
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.
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
Audiophile
“one who pays too much for speaker cables”
I always refer to myself as “a bit of an audiophile” because I went and researched a ton to get a particular amp and not your typical Sony speakers/ soundbar. And I just have particular interest in nice sound reproduction.
But my speaker cables are just about as cheap as you can get.
Mine are the remnants of a vacuum cleaner power cord. There’s a lot of copper there, and a lot of rubber between them.
A true audiophile can tell the difference between when its wound clockwise vs anticlockwise. /s
also see: rube.
Botanophile… my question is, what the average user who does not know the word or can guess it, will think of it. There is not doubt that it is not a sexual suffix, but if the reader does not recognize it, would they think it was?
That you like IRC bots.
Just go with Botanyphile. With perhaps a very brief explanation in the Forward.
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
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.
Cinephile is another common term.
to be frank, “Numberwang” is more titillating than “Numberphile”
That’s Numberwang!
Let’s rotate the board!
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.
There’s only two words with the ‘phile’ ending that is sexual that I can think of. But audiophile, videophile, and a host of others use that ending in the context of a preference or attraction: nemophile has nothing to do with animated fish, for instance. Hemophilia is another example of a commonplace word that is definitely not sexual.
I want to think the average person knows there’s no sex in halophilia, but we could be overestimating.
I’m absolutely halophile, horny for Cortana
You may be right, but it is interesting that most sexual interests have a “-philia” name although they are described as paraphilias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paraphilias
Paraphilias are described just as atypical sexual interests, so by the looks pretty much anything outside of the “standard missionary married male and female lights off until male cums”, which seems pretty specific and probably should be described as paraphilia too. Tradphilia? Xd
I don’t know if this is international but it’s a common joke in British media to use this as a bit of a joke, for example a geeky character might say that they’re a bibliophile, and the dumb character will make it sexual.
Random dude I was talking to mentioned he was a “heliophile” mid-conversation about weather. Dude thought he was so smart, cuz apparently no one ever knows what he means when he uses that term. He joked about people sort of recoiling at the sound of the word.
Anyway, I’d heard of helio and phile…. So he likes the sun. Uh, cool.
What a weird guy
No, because I’m no uncultured swine.
Most people here say no. I’m not so sure, however.
No, but I’m surprised you didn’t go with the suffix mania.
