Ubuntu means "joke" in Swahili 6816

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, John Bailo wrote on Thu, 08 Dec 2005 07:30:09 -0800

Erm, you sure you're not confusing UBuntu with a very old Gentoo LiveCD?

As for the subject matter -- a scan at If there is a meaning to "Ubuntu" it's not here, though term for humaneness". The actual Linx distro, at

The problem with this explanation, of course, is that there are a large number of African languages (Swahili among them, but also Afrikaaner and Zulu), but I can't say I know of very many of them, let alone actually know *any* of them.

For what it's worth the term for "joke" coughs up multiple answers (not all that surprising); the best one is probably illustrated by

maneno yake yasikutishe, yeye ni mtu wa masoka sana

which is the Swahili for

Don't believe what he says, he is a wag-joker.

FWIW, www.masoka.com is a hardcore website in what appears to be Spanish, proving once again the Web has an odd sense of humor...

Considering that ubuntu.com is registered in the Isle of Man (near or part of the UK), I for one would think that rather unlikely.

-- It's still legal to go .sigless.