What do you do when a conword happens to match a slur?

[Man in Space]

Asked this at the Other Place, but figured it’d be beneficial to post here too.

I’ve never (that I know of) had this happen to me in one of my langs, but I could easily see it happening.

[Knox Adjacent]

Rename it

[DesEsseintes]

I wouldn’t do anything.

A word the spelling or pronunciation of which happens to appear similar to that of a slur or expletive or embarrassing body part noun in another language is bound to occur in almost any language, constructed or otherwise.

A string of sounds without intent to offend or harm isn’t a slur. Even in a conlang.

Lastly, the likelihood of anyone ever coming across any potentially offensive lexemes in my conlangs is extremely low.

[Creyeditor]

I once changed the declension class of a noun to avoid a slur. This also gives me irregular nouns in Kobardon, which where utterly missing before. And some nice contexts for diachronic palatalization later on.

[lsd]

my first name in my conlang means something like sex to taste hair...
maybe I should use my middle name...

[Khemehekis]

One of the continents on Junsu (the planet where Tenta is located) is called Bina. When I added it to my Kankonian dictionary in 2011, I had never even heard of the anti-Mexican slur that it sounds like.

No retcons. I'm keeping it.

[nornorn]

I encountered this issue once. In the end, I didn't change it, since it's a pretty simple and common sound and would mostly appear declensed and therefore changed anyways.

[WeepingElf]

It is IMHO not hard to avoid such words even in an a posteriori diachronic conlang (as my main conlangs are) where a problematic form may fall out of the sound changes: just decide that this item has been lost.

[prettydragoon]

If that should happen... I do nothing. And not only that, I disavow all knowledge of such a slur.

Of course, Cleopatra is my middle name. The Queen of Denial.

[eldin raigmore]

If that should happen... I do nothing. And not only that, I disavow all knowledge of such a slur.

Of course, Cleopatra is my middle name. The Queen of Denial.

I didn’t even know you had a middle name!

[prettydragoon]

I didn’t even know you had a middle name!

I am vast. I contain multitudes. ;)

[Arayaz]

It's not difficult to avoid, I must say. Don't create it in the protolanguage, and if something evolves that way, just say it dropped from use.

However, if one does sneak by (e.g. it's lesser-known and I didn't catch it), I wouldn't cut it from the language, but perhaps invent a synonym, which I can use in the future instead of it.

[lsd]

otherwise it's inevitable
that words in one language will be homonyms of other words in a foreign languages
and possibly slurs...

this is already the case within a single language,
especially the shortest slurs...

and if the addition of globalism and puritanism condemns them,
as a (con)linguist I find it ridiculous to be worried...