Background
For my thesis I wrote a program that performs calculations on galaxy models. I named it easy_galaxy
. My adviser thought the name was too long, and asked me to shorten it. I came up with EzGal
(pronounced exactly as you think: "easy gal"). Under that name, the application was finished, it was being distributed to (and used by) the broader community, and a paper was published all about it. It is also on my github profile by its name. I never once thought about the name (nor did my collaborators, apparently), but I mentioned it in passing to my wife. She gave me a funny look and asked me if I actually named this program "easy gal". I had, and it is far too late to change the name.
The problem
The trouble is that it comes up in a professional context. It came up frequently when I was interviewing: it wasn't the most difficult part of my thesis, but it was a good solution to a common problem and is (for the community in question) widely used as a result. It is also publicly available, while most of my professional work has been private and locked up in closed-source-software, which made it an important talking point when I was interviewing. I enjoyed the project itself, so if I'm talking about past work with colleagues I bring it up from time-to-time because it is my little pet project.
Unfortunately now that it is clear to me that the name is mildly suggestive, and that is probably more obvious to others than it was to me, I hesitate to bring up the project itself. Once or twice I've brought it up and explained the name (and that it was an innocent mistake), but sometimes I think that doing so makes a mountain out of a molehill. Then sometimes I mention the project but don't comment on the name, and spend the rest of the conversation wondering if the other person thinks I'm a womanizer. It is especially awkward when the other person is a woman.
Any suggestions on how to discuss this past project of mine that I'm fairly happy with, in a way that moves past its unfortunate name quickly without derailing whatever conversation I'm having?
Quick edit to add timeline
Based on some of the comments I just wanted to clarify one detail. This really happened quite a while ago. I started the very first version of this software package in 2010, renamed it probably that same year, and published the paper about it in early 2012. I graduated in late 2012 and left Academia for the world of software engineering. I was more irritated with myself than anything else when I realized how the name could be misunderstood (probably somewhere in mid 2012), but with the paper already published my adviser suggested we simply leave it as is.
In the past year or so there have been many high-profile stories about how both the tech industry and (in particular) the academic world of astronomy gravely mistreat women, and that helped put my project name back on my radar after many years of not thinking about it.