Riot is now Element

Whatsapp can be an extremely confusing name for non-native English speakers. I'm from Spain and I think 90% of the time I see it written in Spain, it's written wrong (wassap, whasapp, wuatsapp, whatsap, watsap, wuassap, wuassapp, whatsup, watsup, etc.). Sometimes a phonetically "transliterated" version is used instead, like "guasap", which I find more tolerable because at least then it becomes a genuine Spanish word, rather than a botched attempt at writing an English word.

Also, many people don't get the meaning/pun in the name at all (which probably is one of the reasons for writing it wrong). Even to me, with a good English level, it wasn't immediate because "what's up" is a very idiomatic greeting and not one that non-natives (or at least, Spanish people) tend to use in a natural way. It took some time to click in my mind.

That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.

This is so true. I remember this when I had a conversation with a Spanish developer and he said Java mid-sentence...

Tangential, but I would recommend considering "What's up?" to be the standard informal/low-register idiomatic greeting in American English. It's like "Ce faci?" in Romanian - indeed you'll sometimes get even native English speakers responding with "Good, and you?"

Wow, native English speaker and I didn't even get the pun until this comment. I thought it was a stupid play on "What app should we message each other on?" and thus kind of a silly name. But folks use it regardless.

I second this, as an American. “What’s up”, “hey”, or “yo” (or some combination of the above like “yo, what’s up?”) are all extremely ubiquitous and way more common than more standard greetings like “hi” or “hello”, I in my experience.

QuepasApp?

As a pedantic native English speaker, the name "WhatsApp" has always irritated me somehow. It's just not nice. There's an apostrophe missing, it's two words with intermediate capitalization and no space, "App" in the name of an app is redundant, the "pun" is a bit dumb (does it even really qualify as a pun?)...

But it's clearly worked out well for them, so I guess it's a good thing people like me weren't involved in their naming. shrug

Hahaha thank you for making me laugh so hard

> That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.

This was the case, but the market has changed. At the time, here in Spain Whatsapp was marketed as "like text, but free". We were still spending about 12 cents per SMS back then, or buying silly packages like "100 sms for 10 euro", so getting it was a no brainer. Anyone could have sold that idea.

Nowadays, however, whatsapp is so ubiquitous that I'm not even sure they can be replaced anytime soon, so if someone wants to undertake that task they better have all the help they can get.

So how do you reply to "What's up", by saying "Not much" or repeating "What's up"? I've never been able to figure this one out.

"How's it going?"

I'm actually not 100% sure now that I think about it, but I think what I do is figure out from the intonation/context whether it's intended as a generic greeting (in which case I'd repeat it back) or as an actual question (in which case I might respond with "oh, not much, what about you?" or similar).

Also a native English speaker, also had no idea it was supposed to be a pun until right now. I just thought it was another silly name from an Asian company.

"What's up" is actually a true invitation to tell the person recent events that have happened to you. If you don't want to give many details, possible responses are "Not much", "Same old, same old", "Nothing new", etc. You can also respond in the same way as you would to "How are you?", e.g. "Let's see, I'm doing good, trying to stay sane in Corona-times, but healthy!"

You should never just repeat "What's up" back without first answering the question. That is, it's OK to say "Not much, what's up with you?" but not just point black "What's up" in response.

In Brazil we call it "Zap".

WhatsApp dominates Brazil completely as well, and people called it ZapZap or just zap.

Complete tangent, but, by any chance, when you read things, do you not 'hear' a voice in your head reading them?

Curious, because I'm pretty sure the first time I ran across Whatsapp it was in text, but I tend to 'hear' the things I read/write in my head, as though a voice read them to me. And because of that the pun stuck out. It might just be I'm more inclined to look for puns (playing games with them all the time with friends and family), but wondering if that might be part of it: if you just see the name and it's just a word, not something sounded out in your head, you of course would not notice the play on words.

For a phatic ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression ) greeting like this, you're pretty much safe to respond with any other phatic greeting. These phrases just serve as verbal handshakes of acknowledgement, and don't need to be interpreted literally.

If you are a father, “the sky.” Otherwise, just repeating “what’s up” or “hey, how are you!?” is fine.

I'd be cautious calling it a "true invitation"; it is true that someone who greets with "what's up" isn't going to be put off by a brief legitimate answer, but the greeter is likely not trying to introduce a conversation topic on your well-being, and may be caught off-guard if you launch into an extensive answer.

I would also caution against strongly saying that one should "never" fail to answer the question; in the US at least, it's such a common/generic expression that nobody is likely to be offended if you respond with "hey, how's it going?", or "hey, what's up?", or "what's up with you?".

The situation is similar to "howdy", which almost nobody outside the US south realizes is actually a question (short for "how are you doing?"). Sincerely answering "howdy" with e.g. "I'm fine, thanks" is a bit of a shibboleth that southerners can use to identify each other, but failure to do so is not any real faux pas.

I don't think that's it, I hear words in my head, but didn't get the pun until I watched a Jimmy Fallon bit where he made fun of the name.

Really? I'm a native Spanish speaker, and the first thing I thought when learning about the app was that[1] ad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W16qzZ7J5YQ

(Forgive me, it was still recent around here at the time the app got popular).

Following on this train, as an fluent English speaker, millennial, Asian American that grew up in Texas public school all my life, and a lover of memes and puns...I also didn't realize WhatsApp was a pun...woah.

the way my family in Spain says Whatsapp is so funny. "tengo un mesnaje en la wassa"

It's a clever name. As an english speaker if some comms app out of spain named QuéPasapp that I wouldn't declare that it's name should be changed just because it's based on a spanish expression? I don't really see the problem. Until there's a universal language that everyone speaks this will happen over and over.

Are you thinking of Wechat? Whatsapp is run by Facebook.

I agree with you. You know what's worse? FaceApp. But somehow, the general public just gets it. This is what the peoples like.

As a nonuser of WhatsApp, I don't care who owns it. Thinking the app comes from Asia is understandable; There's a large number of apps coming from Asia whose names sound nonsensical in the West (quite likely some of them have as much meaning as our own apps have, and are just foreign words or sounds). There's not many apps coming from Africa or South America these days (that I'm aware of), while Asia has quite a lot.

Well that proves it, it's not a great name :)

I just realized what the name mean, knowing the expression at least since wazzzzaaaaahh

I don't even have to open the link to know that it's that budweiser ad. That's where my mind goes too when I think about the name of the app.

I think whatsapp has a nice ring to it, even if people doesn't know how to write it. Surely being able to write it on a store search is important, but not as important as sounding good.

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And does people get the name of Waze? It took me a while, because in this case not being a native English speaker is a real problem.

85% of people hear their voice when reading / forming thoughts.

And then there are the others [1].

1 https://twitter.com/KylePlantEmoji/status/122171379291396506...