Indeed, it is time for much jubilation and to rejoice. Nintendo has officially declared what the name their next-generation console will assume, in lieu of the heretofore used codename 'Revolution'. And that name, dear readers, is 'Wii'. Wii, as in 'What the hell were Wii thinking naming a freaking console this?!" Yes, now when you receive a positive answer from a French-speaking person, giving you the affirmative response of "Oui", you can inquire as to why said language of love linguist has brought a gaming console into the conversation.

I believe this new moniker will engender a prodigious joke series with the new Nintendo console landing squarely on the butt end (I mean, literally the second I saw the new name, I was already mulling over jokes I could throw into this article). While the characters 'ii' stand for "good" in Japanese, the multiple English interpretations of the name 'Wii' facilitate limitless comical possibilities. This name might very well undermine North American sales for the new system, as gamers might be rather inclined to abstain from purchasing a console with what they perceive to be a "cute" or otherwise "silly" name. This would certainly not be the first instance of a foreign brand name or slogan marketing snafu.

Consider perhaps one of the greatest blunders in GM history, upon attempting to push sales of the Chevy Nova in Latin America. Seems like one of the lightly starched shirt marketing fellows should have done a smidge more research, as "No va" translates to "doesn't go" or "doesn't work" in Spanish. Needless to say, the Latin culture was loathe to embrace an automobile whose name didn't inspire even a modicum of confidence.

When Coca-Cola was first introduced into China, based on translating the phonetics of the name into Chinese, the brand conveyed to citizens that buying Coca-Cola would make you the proud recipient of a delectable female horse stuffed with wax. Yummy.

And on the subject of soft drinks, who could forget the Pepsi slogan of several years ago, evincing that we all "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation"? Well, Pepsi for one would probably like to excoriate that from memory, as the Chinese version advertised the highly necromantic qualities of the beverage, stating that "Pepsi brings back your ancestors from the grave."

In North America and amongst other English-speaking gamers, the new Wii will come under a great deal of scrutiny due to the ease with which the name can be mocked. As people are reading this article or discovering the news themselves, I am certain a vast number of other Wii-based joke iterations are torridly racing through everyone's minds. Reading the generic "mission statement" business-speak on the Nintendo Revolution site did not disspell any of the issues I have with the name, but rather, incited further chortles and guffaws. All this comes just mere weeks before E3, where I anticipate the collective utterances of "Wii" by participants on the floor will be either interpreted as a canticle mindlessly droning about the next-gen system, or as the sound of thousands of children gleefully playing in the plastic ball pit at McDonald's. I suspect it will be the latter.