Nokia Lumia Fiasco: Did You Know That ‘Lumia’ is Spanish for 'Prostitute'?

Nokia has revealed its Lumia range of smartphones - the Lumia 710 and 800 - which will be the first smartphones to run on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS. The company, however, was late in realizing that the word lumia, in Spanish, is a colloquial term meaning prostitute.

But Nokia will perhaps be relieved of any embarrassment, given that Apple's iPhone 4S's voice assistant, Siri, actually faintly resembles the Japanese word for buttocks. Needless to say, Twitter was flooded with comments as soon as the new smartphone was unveiled.

'Lumia' apparently means hooker in Spanish. Discuss, wrote @zacharye (Zach Epstein), a user.

Previously, in 1983, Coors came up with a mascot called BeerWolf, whose slogan Turn it Loose! meant suffer from diarrhea in Spanish. In 2006, Clairol, a hair products company, came up with a curling iron and called it Mist Stick. Mist in German, however, means manure.

The worst of all these mishaps affected Japanese game developers Sega. The word Sega, in Italian, is supposed to be slang for masturbation.

The Lumia smartphones are expected to arrive next month.