Why the guy who changed his name to 'iPhone 7' is cooler than you think

In Ukrainian, changing your name to iPhone 7 is actually a pretty clever idea.
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

You might think you love your iPhone 7, but you definitely don't love it more than one Ukrainian man who recently made a great sacrifice to get one: giving up his very name.

The possibly-too-hardcore Apple fan, formerly known as Olexander Turin, actually changed his name to iPhone Sim (sim means "seven" in Ukrainian) to win an iPhone 7 from a local electronics store.

An Apple iPhone 7 costs about $850 in Ukraine, so when the store offered a free unit to the first five people to change their name to iPhone 7, according to the AP, the 20-year-old Mr. Sim rushed to change his legal name, which costs just about $2 in Ukraine.


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If he had tried this with the iPhone 6, his name definitely wouldn't sound as cool in English.

And while the change definitely won't age well in his native Ukrainian, in English, Mr. Sim could easily be read as SIM, the acronym for "Subscriber Identity Module," the removable smart card inside mobile phones that contains cellular user data. Therefore, in combination with the word iPhone, Sim would essentially make his name evergreen, because every iPhone (for the foreseeable future) will indeed have a SIM.

Mr. Sim also has damn good timing. If he had tried this with the iPhone 6, his name definitely wouldn't sound as cool in English. According to Google Translate, six in Ukrainian is "shist." It's not hard to imagine what some English speakers would hear in that case.

So congratulations, Mr. Sim! Although you tossed off your already pretty awesome name for the name of an Apple product that changes every year, luckily, international friends will still think your name is cool long after we see the release of the iPhone 8.

"Allow me to introduce myself, I am…. (ethereal computer beeps chirp from the folds of his tuxedo jacket) Mr. SIM."

Topics iPhone

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