Just find an English-speaking friend, and ask...

Every now and again, a new story comes along to be added to the great list of terrible brand names that have been used. Usually, the examples are given in business school case studies as warnings to double check everything.
The last example is of the Russian Gas concern, Gazprom, and their new joint venture with Nigeria's state oil company. The name of the new company is Nigaz.
Of course this is causing a lot of comment, and there were a number of articles looking at the fau pas. The deal between was supposed to show off the Kremlin's growing interest in Africa's energy reserves, and instead, it will be used to show how provincial businesspeople can be, and that it is very important to have a good grasp of English.
The mistake was first pointed out on the popular site twitter, (which I will definitely have to write about in the near future!), and before long, it had moved on to marketing website Brand Republic, and finally onto the Guardian website.
I wrote that it was a mistake, but is it a mistake? It is common practice in Eastern European languages to form a name by putting the first syllables of all the important words together (Some Polish building companies -budownictwo- in Krakow are called Krak-Bud, Budokrak, PolBud, Budopol, etc.)
Take the name of the country first -perhaps out of respect- and you have 'Ni'. Take the first syllable from the Russian company, 'Gaz', and you must get 'Nigaz'. Some people have laughed that President Medvedev didn't ask anyone what it might mean before announcing the company at a press conference in Nigeria, but who on the president's staff has such a role -Cultural Omniscient? Another question is why should he?
The word may be offensive in English, but here we have a company which has a final product that will be marketed in Nigeria, where the Nigerians were not upset by the word, and Russia, in whose language the word is not insulting.
And what about where people are proud of the name? I lived in Germany where the Real hypermarket chain had outsourced the butcher's section to a family company whose name was the surname of its founders. With every piece of steak I bought, I would receive a label with the price, and the friendly greeting "Vielen Dank, Fuck GmbH". What should you do if your name is offensive in another language?
I'm sure for every product that has a funny or taboo meaning in English, there are more English product names that have taboo or funny meanings in other languages.
For example, Osram lightbulbs sell their products with no shame in Poland, where the name means "I defecate all around it". There is also the famous story of Mistubishi's 4x4 vehicle, the Pajero ( a name in Spanish for someone who enjoys masturbating a lot), which some argue well defines the drivers of these vehicles! The car was renamed the Montero in some regions of the world. The fact that we see these multimillion dollar concerens making mistakes like this is, for some reason, comforting. It gives us the feeling that everyone makes mistakes, and we aren't so worried by it. I wanted to see if the president of the German meat merchant agreed with me, but when I put 'Fuck President" into Google, a lot of websites about George W. Bush came up.